.ftfLKAL 


LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

University  of  California. 


Class 


THE 


RUSSIAN  REVOLT 


ITS 


CAUSES,  CONDITION,  AND  PROSPECTS 


EDMUND  NOBLE 


BOSTON 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

New  York  :  11  East  Seventeenth  Street 

€&  Btbersfoe  tyresse,  Camfcrt&ge 

l88q 


n 


L^uiAi. 


Copyright,  1885, 
By  EDMUND  NOBLE. 


All  rights  reserved. 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge: 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  0.  Houghton  &  Co. 


CONTENTS. 


Pagk 
Nomadic  Survivals 5 

Apolism 35 

Environment 57 

Old  Russian  Life 76 

Byzantinism  and  the  Three   Unities 93 

Domestic  Slavery 110 

The  Religious  Protest 126 

Western  Enlightenment 145 

First  Fruits 160 

Mysticism  and  Pessimism 179 

The  Dynamic  Period 193 

Personal  Characteristics 212 

Modern  Irritations 231 

Europe  and  the  Revolt  :  The  Future 252 


171581 


UNIVERSITY 

OF 
£*LfFOR*4\L 


THE   RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 


NOMADIC   SURVIVALS. 


The  Russian  plain,  as  I  saw  it  almost  unin- 
termittingly  during  a  ten  days'  journey  in  the 
summer  of  1882,  has  a  strange  power  of  re- 
producing some  of  those  illusions  that  are  prop- 
erly called  marine.  At  sea  most  people  have 
noticed  how  largely  the  apparent  extent  of  the 
prospect  offered  to  the  eye  of  a  spectator  de- 
pends on  the  state  of  the  waters,  or  rather  upon 
the  particular  character  of  their  surface  at  the 
moment  of  observation.  Should  the  waves  run 
high,  presenting  their  optical  effect  in  a  com- 
paratively few  concentrated  masses  of  large 
dimensions,  the  sense  of  extension  is  weakened, 
and  the  sky  line  made  to  assume  a  nearness  not 
its  due.  But  when  the  disturbance  is  over,  and 
there  are  left  only  tiny  waves,  little  more  than 
ripples,  the  horizon  seems  to  have  receded  to  a 
distance  relatively  immense.  It  is  this  false 
vastness  of  surface,  suggested   to   the   eye  by 


6  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

great  multiplicity  and  regularity,  as  well  as 
minuteness,  of  detail,  that  gives  so  much  of  its 
aspect  to  the  landscape  of  European  Russia, 
and  to  a  traveler,  plodding  day  after  day  over 
steppe  and  plain,  seems  to  swell  a  territory  by 
no  means  in  need  of  exaggeration  into  dimen- 
sions almost  too  abnormal  for  even  the  imagina- 
tion. And  the  sensation  is  the  same  whether 
one  experience  it  in  the  barren  governments  of 
the  southeast,  or  amid  the  activities  of  com- 
munal agriculturists  in  the  rich  regions  of  the 
"  black  earth."  Summer  or  winter,  seed  time 
or  harvest,  the  same  smooth  plateau  widens  out 
as  the  eye  follows  to  its  union  with  the  sky, 
and  the  same  circular  rim  bounds  vision  with  a 
line  that  often  looks  regular  enough  to  be  made 
the  base  of  an  astronomical  calculation.  Un- 
dulations of  surface  are  very  rare,  and  when 
met  with  sometimes  denote  mere  fluent  masses 
of  sand  or  mud-dust  that  have  been  capriciously 
arranged  by  the  wind.  Interruptions  of  the 
monotony  are,  in  fact,  so  insignificant  that, 
instead  of  serving  as  correctives,  they  actually 
seem  to  add  to  the  general  sense  of  flatness, 
whether  it  be  conveyed  by  plain,  forest,  or 
town. 

At  a  very  early  period  of  its  history,  Russia 
in  Europe  was  all  but  overrun  by  forests.  To- 
day the  traveler  may  cross  vast  tracts  of  the 


NOMADIC  SURVIVALS.  7 

country  without  seeing  a  single  tree.  Accord- 
ing to  some  native  writers,  nothing  more  is 
needed  than  the  destruction  of  a  few  woods  to 
turn  the  whole  of  European  Russia  into  a 
"desert  steppe."1  The  absence  of  accessible 
stone  formations,  and  particularly  of  moun- 
tains, is  more  marked  still.  Hence,  no  doubt, 
the  attraction  which  all  hill  scenery  has  to  the 
modern  Russian.  It  is  a  strange  fact,  more- 
over, that  to  mountain  scapes,  Russian  litera- 
ture is  indebted  for  some  of  its  finest  produc- 
tions. Exiled,  as  each  of  them  was  at  different 
times,  to  the  Caucasus  Mountains,  both  Pushkin 
and  Lermontov  2  found  rich  stores  of  poetic  ma- 
terial in  that  sublime  range.  All  who  know 
this  part  of  the  country  will  agree  with  me 
when  I  say  that  scarcely  any  contrast  in  scenery 
can  be  conceived  at  all  so  striking  or  so  likely 
to  preside  at  the  birth  of  new  ideas  as  the  con- 
trast thus  offered  between  the  flat  land  of 
European  Russia  and  the  heights  of  which 
Pushkin  wrote :  — 

"Eternal  thrones  of  snow, 
Whose  lifted  summits  gloom  to  the  gaze 
Like  one  unbroken,  motionless  chain  of  clouds; 
And  in  their  midst  the  twin-peaked  colossus, 

i  "Pustinnaya  step."    St.  Petersburg  Novosti,  Oct.  4,  1883. 

2  Griboyedov,  another  Russian  author,  wrote  also  within  sight 
of  the  Caucasus  his  celebrated  comedy,  The  Misfortune  of  Hav- 
ing Brains. 


8  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

The  giant  monarch  of  mountains,  Elbrus, 
Whitens  up  into  heaven's  blue  deep." 

That  mountains  are  not  commonplace  objects 
in  Russia,  and  that  the  Eastern  Slav  must 
travel  for  them  to  the  Ural  chain,  to  the  Cau- 
casus, or  to  Switzerland,  seems  even  to  have 
attained  a  certain  expression  in  the  proverbial 
philosophy  of  the  common  people,  who  speak 
of  things  at  a  great  distance  as  "beyond  the 
mountains."1 

To  what  extent,  then,  and  in  what  especial 
manner,  has  the  course  of  history  and  eiviliza-. 
tion  in  Russia  been  influenced  by  physical 
peculiarities  of  contour  and  surface?  What 
does  the  GreaT  Russian  owe  to  race,  and  what 
to  geographical  position?  Underlying  all  pos- 
sible answers  that  may  be  given  to  these  ques- 
tions are  two  facts  on  which  some  emphasis 
should  be  laid ;  for  not  only  have  the  Russians 
been  exposed  to  a  series  of  peculiar  influences 
not  paralleled  by  any  single  case  of  racial 
development  in  western  Europe,  but  all  Russian 
phenomena  of  to-day,  be  the^c-social,  political, 
religious,  jmJiterary.,  will  be  found  to~  have  a 
special  character,  rendering  their  reconciliation 
with  apparently  inter-related  phenomena  in 
other  countries  wholly  impossible.     M.  Pelle- 

1  "Za  gorami."     This  is  scarcely  related  to  the  German  "iiber 
alle  Berge." 


NOMADIC  SURVIVALS  9 

tan 1  says  happily  that  every  civilization  has  an 
involuntary  collaborateur  within  its  own  terri- 
tory ;  and  in  Russia  the  influence  of  this  silent 
helper  must  have  been  immense.  The  "  coun- 
lESLof  plains^.'  as  the  historian  Soloviev  calls  it, 
was  from  the  first  marked  out  for  a  kind  of 
development  fundamentally  different <_  from  that 
of  the  older  western  civilizations.  L  Plains  in- 
vite to  movement  and  migration,  just  as  hills 
and  mountains  attach  men  to  particular  spots 
of  the  earth's  surface^  In  European  Russia 
this  wandering  tendency  had  special  circum- 
stances in  its  favor,  since,  while  it  was  often 
nothing  more  than  a  protest  against  absolutism 
and  centralization,  it  actually  formed  one  of  the 
indispensable  conditions  of  the  national  devel- 
opment. 

Nor  could  migratory  movements  fail  to  be 
largely  promoted  by  influences  such  as  those  of 
race,  intermingling,  and  environment.  Let  us 
suppose  for  a  moment  that  the  Great  Russian 
started  his  racial  career  as  a  genuine  Slav  of  the 
purest  Aryan  stock.  It  by  no  means  necessarily 
follows  that  his  lineal  descendant  of  to-day  has 
no  Tnra.njp.n  hlnnrl  jn  his  veins,  no  Asiatic  cus- 
toms in  the  various  forms  of  his  social  and  re- 
ligious life.  The  theory  of  a  pure  Slav  race  of 
Great  Russians  has  ceased  to  have  attraction 

i  Profession  de  Foi  du  XIX  Steele .    Paris. 


10  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

even  for  the  Slavs  themselves.  It  is  not  in  ac- 
cordance with  well-known  facts.  In  the  earlier 
part  of  their  national  existence,  the  Russians 
occupied  scarcely  a  fifth  part  of  the  territory 
which  they  claim  in  the  Europe  of  to-day.  On 
the  north  and  east  and  southeast  they  were 
closely  hemmed  in  by  races  of  Turanian  or- 
igin, of  wandering  habits  and  AsiaHc'ciistoms. 
They  lived  in  every-day  contact  with  the  Finns, 
the  Cheremiss,  the  Pechenegs,  the  Mordvs,  and 
Kazars.  What,  then,  became  of  these  peoples 
in  the  gradual  expansion  of  the  Slav  colonies  to 
the  north  and  west  ?  Were  they  simply  driven 
back  into  Asia? 

The  evidence  available  shows  that  these  Ta- 
tar-Turkish races  were  in  a  large  measure  ab- 
sorbed. The  Finnish  traits  of  many  Russian 
faces  seen  in  the  northern  cities  clearly  testify 
to  blood  alliances  on  the  part  of  the  Slavs  with 
their  nomad  neighbors,  while  in  the  west,  ac- 
cording to  Mr.  Wallace,  race-intermingling  has 
left  its  mark  upon  whole  districts.  Transmis- 
sion of  habits,  moreover,  must  have  taken  place 
quite  independently  of  alliances  such  as  these. 
M.  Soloviev,  in  explaining  the  difference  be- 
tween Russian  and  west  European  customs, 
expressly  alludes,  not  only  to  internal  causes, 
but  to  "  the  constant  contact  and  relations  of 
the  Russians   with  Asiatic  peoples,  providing 


NOMADIC  SURVIVALS.  11 

for  the   absorption   of  the   latter  and  for  the 
transmission  of  their  habits."1 

What,  again,  is  absorption  ?  Not  a  few  wri- 
ters use  the  term  as  if  it  were  synonymous  with 
disappearance.  This  is  a  manifest  error.  A 
type  can  no  more  cease  to  be  than  the  materials 
of  which  it  is  composed.  The  function  of  much 
of  this  so-called  "  dying  out "  seems  to  be  the 
very  useful  one  of  preparing  a  new  race  for 
new  conditions  by  a  process  of  acclimatization 
much  more  rapid  than  the  ordinary  one  of  air 
and  food.  In  some  cases  absorption  serves  as  a 
sort  of  drawbridge  over  which  inferior  peoples 
hasten  from  adverse  conditions  to  a  place  of 
racial  safety.  If,  therefore,  where  absorption 
took  place,  the  early  Slavs  contributed  to  the 
new  ethnological  modification  such  elements  as 
character,  energy,  daring,  initiative,  intellect, 
enterprise,  the  nomads  giving  form,  structure, 
some  habits  and  more  traditions,  we  can  easily 
understand  how  a  glow  of  new  life  would  arise 
in  the  men  of  the  plains,  and  how  to  the  Slavs 
would  come,  it  may  be,  hereditary  memories  of 
a  more  eastern  existence,  hereditary  sympathies 
with  wild  movements  and  migrations,  of  which 
the  only  sentiment  of  nationality  was  the  sense 
of  numbers,  the  likeness  of  faces,  the  community 
of  purpose.     But  a  speculation  such  as  this  in- 

i   Uchtbnaya  Kniga  russkoy  Istorii. 


12  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

dicates  only  the  kind  of  influence  likely  to  be 
exerted  upon  the  Slav  colonies  by  the  Tataric 
populations  of  Eastern  Russia.  Leaving  aside 
all  supposition  or  inference,  the  fact  remains, 
of  an  absolute  certainty,  that  the  processes  men- 
tioned —  of  race-intermingling  on  the  one  hand, 
and  close  e^tlmojogical  contact  on  the  other  — 
were  continued  through  very  considerable  pe- 
riods of  time,  and  that  each  tended  to  the 
modification  of  the  Russian  character  by  the 
transference  of  racial  habits  and  customs. 

The  Mongol  invasion  still  further  helped  to 
give  an  Asiatic  turn  to  the  earlier  forms  of  Rus- 
sian civilization.  Remembering  that  for  two 
hundred  years  the  country  was  occupied  and 
dominated  by  men  of  high  cheek-bones,  of  eyes 
set  obliquely,  and  of  sallow  visage,  speaking  a 
Tatar  tongue,  one  cannot  think  it  strange  that 
Asiatic  traits  should  now  and  then  rise  to  the 
ethnological  surface  of  modern  Russia.  Some 
historians  attach  little,  others  great,  importance 
to  the  Tatar  period  of  Russian  history.  Na- 
tional sensitiveness  and  pride  have  influenced 
native  writers  on  this  subject  when  they  have 
thought  themselves  most  impartial,  yet  M.  Gri- 
goriev,  a  St.  Petersburg  professor,  writes :  — 

"  There  was  a  time  when  Orthodox  Russia  seemed 
thoroughly  Tatar.  Everything  in  it  except  its  relig- 
ion was  permeated  and  impregnated  with  Tatardom, 


NOMADIC  SURVIVALS.  13 

in  the  same  degree,  if  not  more  so,  as  it  is  now  im- 
pregnated with  Western  ideas.  .  .  .  Not  only  in  ex- 
ternals—  in  dress,  manners,  and  habits  of  life  —  did 
the  Russian  princes  and  boyards,  the  Russian  officials 
and  merchants,  imitate  the  Tatars,  but  in  everything 
—  their  feelings,  ideas,  and  aspirations  in  the  region 
of  practical  life  —  they  were  in  the  strongest  way  in- 
fluenced by  Tatardom.  Our  ancestors  received  this 
Tatar  influence  during  two  hundred  years,  at  first 
from  an  unwilling,  but  afterwards  from  an  habitual 
conformity  to  the  tone  and  manners  and  morals  that 
reigned  at  Sarai,1  which  in  those  times  bore  the  same 
relation  to  us  as  subsequently  fell  to  the  lot  of  Paris. 
.  .  .  During  the  whole  of  the  Moscow  period  up  to 
the  time  of  Peter  the  Great,  the  statecraft  and  politi- 
cal management  of  the  Russian  Tsars  and  magnates 
continued  to  be  in  every  respect  Tatar.  So  that 
without  acquaintance  with  real  Tatardom  it  is  impos- 
sible correctly  to  understand  many  phases  in  Russian 
history." 

The  more  superficial  results  of  the  Mongol 
domination  are  easily  discovered.  The  trav- 
eler cannot  bargain  with  the  droshky  driver 
in  St.  Petersburg  without  hearing  words  that 
were  imported  into  Russian  from  an  Asiatic 
speech.  The  Russian  habit  of  eating  food, 
usually  rice,  in  commemoration  of  dead  rela- 
tives, is  clearly  of  Tatar  origin.  When  Rus- 
sian funeral  processions  pause  for  a  few  mo- 

1  Seat  of  the  Mongol  Khans. 


14  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

ments  at  churches  in  their  line  of  march,  they 
are  doing  precisely  what  certain  Turanian  races 
do  on  like  occasions  in  Central  Asia.  To  call 
the  residence  of  royalty  at  St.  Petersburg  the 
"  Above,"  or  "  Tip-Top  "  (  VerkK),  is  a  habit  of 
speech  borrowed  from  a  purely  nomad  fashion 
of  designating  the  official  domiciles  of  semi-bar- 
barian monarch s  beyond  the  Urals.  For  a 
considerable  period  of  the  national  history,  opu- 
lent Russians  wore  the  tafya,  or  skull-cap,  now 
in  use  among  the  Sarts  of  Tashkent,  and  the 
Tatar  Mahommedans  ;  like  the  men  of  the  des- 
ert, they  shaved  their  heads.1  Many  Russian 
dances  are  of  Asiatic  origin.  The  Russian 
equivalents  for  "  dog,"  "  water-melon,"  "  night- 
cap," "  shoe,"  "  boot,"  "  belt,"  "  cossack,"  are 
all  borrowed  from  Tatar  languages.  Kvas,  the 
popular  Russian  drink,  is  generally  used  in 
China.  Med,  also  a  Russian  beverage,  was 
known  to  the  barbarous  races  of  Central  Asia. 
The  striking  similarity  between  the  Tatar 
customs  of  to-day  and  the  Russian  customs  of 
three  centuries  ago  is  shown  by  the  following 
juxtaposed  extracts  descriptive  of  the  two 
periods :  — 

1  Ocherk  domashnei  zhizni  i  nravov  velikorusshavo  naroda  v 
xvi  i  xvii  stolyetiakh.    N.  I.  Kostomarava.    Page  103. 


NOMADIC   SURVIVALS. 


15 


Moscow.  —  First  Half  of 

16  th  Century, 
The  prince  himself  point- 
ed to  the  seat,  both  by  word 
and  gesture.  When  we 
had  duly  saluted  the  prince 
from  this  spot,  the  inter- 
preter translated  our  com- 
munication. After  hearing 
our  salutation,  he  arose, 
and  descending  from  his 
seat,  said,  "  Is  our  brother 
Charles,  Emperor  and  Su- 
preme King  of  the  Ro- 
mans, well  V  "  To  which 
the  Count  replied,  "He  is 
well."  Ascending  the 
steps,  he  called  each  of  us 
to  him  and  said,  "  Give 
me  thy  hand ;  hast  thou 
traveled  well  on  thy  jour- 
ney?" To  which  each  of 
us  replied,  u  Heaven  grant 
that  thou  mayst  live  in 
health  many  years.  By 
the  grace  of  God  and  thy 
favor,  I  have  been  well." .  .  . 
It  is  the  custom,  after  din- 
ner, for  him  to  say  to  the 
ambassadors,  "Now  you 
may  depart."  —  Interview 
with  Vassily  Ivanovich. 
Herberstein. 


Central  Asia.  — 1874. 

As  I  drew  near,  the  mas- 
ters of  the  ceremonies  ut- 
tered the  usual  loud  cry, 
"  God,  make  his  majesty, 
Amir  Mozaffar,  powerful 
and  victorious  !  "  .  .  .  As  I 
entered  the  tent,  the  Amir 
turned  and  smilingly  held 
out  his  hand,  took  mine, 
and  said,  "  General,  Aman  ! 
Is  the  General  well  ?  "  I  re- 
plied, "  Aman,  he  is  well." 
He  then  gave  his  hand  to  the 
interpreter  and  motioned  to 
us  to  sit  down  facing  him 
at  the  end  of  the  tent.  .  .  . 
1  thanked  him  for  the  per- 
mission, and  waited  a  mo- 
ment longer.  He  began  to 
look  uneasily  towards  the 
door.  The  taksuba  ap- 
peared, and  the  Amir  said, 
"  Now,  go  ! "  upon  which  we 
immediately  took  our  leave. 
—  Interview  with  the  Bek  of 
Khitab,  Bukhara.     Schuy- 


16 


THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 


Russia.  —  First  Half  of 

16th  Century. 
They  [the    Russians]  ob- 
serve this  custom  in  meeting 

o 

ambassadors  going  to  Rus- 
sia. They  send  a  messenger 
to  the  ambassador  to  desire 
him  to  alight  from  his  horse 
or  carriage.  .  .  .  The  dele- 
gate takes  watchful  heed  not 
to  alight  first  from  his  horse 
or  carriage,  lest  by  doing 
so  he  should  seem  to  dero- 
gate from  his  master's  dig- 
nity, and  will  not  alight 
until  he  has  first  seen  the 
ambassador  dismount.  — 
Herberstein. 


Central  Asia.  — 1874. 

Three  miles  from  town,  I 
met  the  assistant  of  the 
Bek  [of  Khitab],  with  his 
suite,  when  we  all  alighted 
and  embraced  one  another, 
each,  however,  taking  par- 
ticular pains  not  to  derogate 
from  his  dignity  by  alight- 
ing too  soon.  I  had  soon 
learnt  whether  to  dismount 
first  or  last,  or  whether  to 
watch  the  motions  of  the 
dignitary  who  met  me,  and 
so  manage  it  that  we  should 
put  our  feet  on  the  ground 
at   one  and  the    same  mo- 


ment. —  Schuyler. 
Turgeniev  wrote  somewhere :  "  With  my 
eyes  shut,  listening  in  Russia  to  the  rustling  of 
the  leaves,  I  should  be  able  to  tell  the  season, 
or  even  the  month  of  the  year."  The  Russian 
novelist  had  a  faculty  not  at  all  common  to 
dwellers  in  west  European  cities.  Indeed,  the 
conditions  of  our  older  civilizations  neither  pro- 
duce acuteness  of  the  senses,  nor  encourage  its 
survival.  The  Slavs,  on  the  other  hand,  boast 
of  the  sharpness  of  their  vision,  and  the  white- 
ness of  their  teeth  ;  their  physical  powers  of 
endurance  could  scarcely  be  greater  had  they 
directly  descended  from  the  followers  of  Chin- 


NOMADIC  SURVIVALS.  17 

gis  Khan.  On  this  point  both.  Kinglake  and 
Vereshchagin  pay  the  most  willing  testimony. 
On  the  intellectual  side  of  the  question,  the 
evidence  is  rather  scant.  It  is  a  fact  that  the 
schot,  or  counting  frame,  is  used  all  over  Rus- 
sia, in  the  simplest  as  well  as  the  most  com- 
plicated arithmetical  operations,  by  the  lowest 
as  well  as  the  highest  in  the  land.  In  Russia 
nobody  seems  capable  of  performing  the  sim- 
plest sum  in  addition  or  subtraction  without 
help  from  the  counting  frame.  I  have  seen 
a  merchant  deliberately  take  down  the  wires 
and  balls  in  order,  by  putting  two  rows  of 
the  latter  side  by  side,  to  ascertain  that  five 
and  five  made  ten.  Government  officials  per- 
form the  most  trifling  calculations  in  the  same 
way. 

This  perpetual  use  of  the  sehot  may  seem  to 
justify  the  inference  that  Russia!* mental  powers 
are  at  fault.  No  more  erroneous  assumption 
could  be  even  imagined.  In  the  faculty  of 
remembering,  in  receptivity  for  knowledge  of 
all  kinds,  the  Great  Russian  carries  off  the 
palm  from  all  western  competitors.  Hence 
his  proficiency  in  acquiring  languages.  In 
this  single  capacity  lies  reflected  the  whole 
busy  world  of  racial  movement  within  which 
Slav  development  took  place.  The  Russian 
may  inherit  much  of  his  receptivity  from  con- 


18  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

stantly  repeated  processes  of  adaptation  to  new 
circumstances  and  varying  conditions ;  but  his 
memory  is  a  racial  characteristic  and  belongs  to 
the  blood.  It  has  been  suggested  that  Russians 
are  easily  linguists,  because  of  special  training  in 
languages  and  of  unusual  facilities  for  acquiring 
them.  The  fact  that  most  Russian  families  of 
the  wealthier  class  are  brought  up  in  constant 
intercourse  with  foreign  governesses  and  tutors 
proves  nothing.  Imported  foreign  governesses 
and  tutors  do  not  prevent  many  English  fami- 
lies from  acquiring  their  proficiency  in  foreign 
speech  abroad.  It  must  be  remembered  that 
in  Russia  this  linguistic  faculty  is  diffused  in  a 
very  democratic  fashion  through  all  classes  of 
society,  priests  and  peasants  alone  excepted. 
Take  the  case  of  Russian  students.  A  large 
number  of  them  are  very  poor.  Many  of  these 
ardent  lovers  of  knowledge  would  never  enjoy 
college  or  university  education  at  all,  were  it 
not  for  the  stipends  they  receive  from  the  gov- 
ernment. In  some  cases,  these  stipends  cover 
the  cost  of  food  and  lodging,  as  well  as  of  tui- 
tion. Yet  it  is  exceedingly  rare  to  meet  with  a 
Russian  student  who  does  not  converse  fluently 
in  either  French  or  German.  Often  the  youth 
speaks  both,  and  has  a  reading  knowledge  of 
other  languages  as  well.  It  has  been  suggested 
that   the   Russians  have  a  superior  system  of 


NOMADIC  SURVIVALS.  19 

teaching  languages.  This  is  the  worst  expla- 
nation of  all,  since  a  born  linguist  will  acquire 
languages  under*  the  worst  possible  system,  even 
without  a  system  at  all ;  and  no  nation  ever 
yet  succeeded  in  maintaining  a  monopoly  in 
methods  of  education.  I  must  urge,  therefore, 
that  Russian  facility  in  languages  is  a  natural 
and  not  a  merely  acquired  art,  that  it  is  a  racial 
characteristic,  favored  in  its  development  by 
peculiar  circumstances  of  ethnologicaLgrowth, 
reference  to  which  will  be  made"  nereafter.  It 
is  this  view  of  the  matter  that  accounts  for  the 
acquirements  of  the  father  of  Vladimir  Mono- 
makh,  who  is  said  to  have  learned  five  lan- 
guages without  quitting  his  palace ;  and  this 
view,  also,  that  explains  the  ease  and  rapidity 
with  which  in  these  days  Russians  domiciled 
abroad  adapt  themselves  to  the  lingual  and  so- 
cial conditions  of  their  new  environment. 

Habit  and  racial  characteristics  thus  give 
coincident  testimony  as  to  the  conditions  of 
Russian  development,  both  showing,  however 
faintly,  that  its  main  features  were  restlessness, 
movement,  migration.  The  evidence  of  history 
is  stronger  still.  In  its  light  we  see  how  to 
the  baby  Slav,  barely  out  of  its  cradle,  destiny 
offered  immense  Volkerwanderungen  as  specta- 
cles. Nearly  all  the  great  historic  processions 
entered  Europe  by  way  of  Russia ;  vast  as  was 


20  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

the  road,  touching  barbarism  on  the  one  hand, 
civilization  on  the  other,  there  were  times  when 
it  seemed  scarcely  broad  enough  for  the  march 
of  the  races  that,  beginning  with  Hun  and  end- 
ing with  Mongol,  swarmed  over  it  in  almost 
uninterrupted  succession.  With  such  an  envi- 
ronment around  him,  the  Slav  soon  began  mi- 
gratory movements  on  his  own  account.  The 
openness  of  the  land  invited  the  exploits  of  the 
druzhiniki  under  their  kniaz;  a  warlike  spirit 
led  to  expeditions  against  the  Turanian  foe. 
Later,  recoiling  from  Mongol  exaction,  attracted 
by  the  virgin  soil  of  the  great  plains  to  the  east, 
the  Russians  spread  in  ever  increasing  waves, 
until  at  last  all  the  European  territory  of  their 
present  empire  lay  at  the  feet  of  the  Slav  colo- 
nist. Nor  was  this  process,  which  ultimately 
carried  the  Russian  emigrants  into  Siberia,  one 
of  mere  expansion  alone.  It  went  on  in  Euro- 
pean Russia  as  a  phase  of  the  restlessness  which 
in  those  days  seemed  to  characterize  all  forms 
of  life  amongst  the  Slavs.  There  were  wander- 
ing migrations  as  well  as  colonizing  migrations. 
The  working  agriculturists  rambled  from  estate 
to  estate,  from  district  to  district,  from  govern- 
ment to  government.  The  movement  at  last 
grew  to  such  dimensions  and  had  so  disastrous 
an  effect  upon  the  national  finances  that,  as  a 
preventive  measure,  the  laborer  had  to  be  at- 


NOMADIC  SURVIVALS.  21 

tached  to  the  glebe.  Migrant  habits  thus  led 
to  that  characteristic  feature  of  Russian  civiliza- 
tion, the  enslavement  of  the  tillers  of  the  soil ; 
and  if,  anticipating  somewhat,  we  look  at  a 
much  later  period  of  Russian  history,  we  shall 
find  that  the  need  of  migration  to  serfs  dying 
off  prematurely  for  lack  of  changed  conditions 
was  one  of  the  arguments  used  and  acted  upon 
in  favor  of  the  emancipation  ukaz  of  1861.1 
The  movement  was  in  great  part  checked  by 
the  preventive  measures  of  Boris  Godunav*.  yet 
serfs  oppressed  by  masters  did  not  scruple  to 
resume  their  earlier  habits  ;  the  Don  Cossacks 
were  for  long  periods  recruited  by  fugitives  of 
this  class.  Tension  in  religious  circles  also  gave 
a  powerful  impulse  to  migration.  Sectarians, 
intolerant  of  the  ecclesiastical  order  of  things 
imported  from  Constantinople  and  imposed  up- 
on the  people  with  the  aid  of  Mongol  blood, 
fled  across  the  country,  and  plunging  through 
trackless  woods,  wandering  by  the  shores  of 
lakes  and  seas,  sought  out  quiet  refuges  for 
their  ideals  in  religion.  One  of  the  protesting 
sects  bears  to  this  day  the  name  "  Stranniki," 
or  Wanderers,  its  leading  dogma  being  the  ne- 
cessity of  ua  perpetual  wandering  from  Anti- 
christ." '  Another  body  of  dissenters,  calling 
themselves  "  Christ  seekers,"  wander  from  town 

1  See  Turgeniev's  Zapi&hi  Okhotniki. 


22  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

to  town,  and  from  one  government  to  another, 
in  the  hope  of  meeting  the  Saviour.1 

Most  of  the  historical  migrations  have  ceased 
with  the  immediate  causes  which  called  them 
into  being ;  but  the  habit  of  wandering,  of 
movement  from  place  to  place,  has  not  disap- 
peared from  Russia.  New  forms  have  been 
given  to  it  by  railways  and  steamboats.  Siberia 
swarms  with  escaped  convicts,  whose  wander- 
ings and  depredations  have  brought  into  exis- 
tence the  sport  known  as  "  vagabond  hunting."  2 
The  conditions  created  by  emancipation  favored 
the  development  of  a  class  of  laborers,  half  peas- 
ants, half  artisans,  who  are  confirmed  migrants, 
spending  part  of  the  year  in  the  country,  the 
remainder  of  it  in  the  town.  In  a  sense,  even 
religion  is  migrant  in  Russia.  The  lavra  of 
Sergius  is  said  to  attract  over  a  million  pilgrims 
every  year.3  Kiev,  with  its  tombs,  icons,  and 
relics,  is  also  a  spot  where  thousands  of  the 
orthodox  annually  gather  from  all  parts  of  the 
Russian  empire.  Numerous  fairs  encourage 
movement  at  stated  times  in  the  year.  Work- 
men rarely  remain  for  any  considerable  period 
in  one  factory  or  district.     The  vastness  of  the 

1  Raslcolniki  i  Ostrozhniki.  By  Fiodor  Vassilievich  Livanov. 
St.  Petersburg,  1873. 

2  "  Okhota  na  brodyag."  See  an  article  in  the  now  defunct 
Review,  Otechestvenny  Zapishi.    Nov.,  1882. 

s  St.  Petersburg  Golos,  1865.    No.  283. 


NOMADIC  SURVIVALS.  23 

country,  moreover,  gives  a  migratory  character 
to  almost  all  forms  of  the  movement  of  travel. 
Students  who  journey  to  St.  Petersburg  from 
the  southern,  central,  or  eastern  governments  of 
Russia,  in  order  to  spend  several  years  of  an 
educational  course  in  a  city  which  must  become 
their  home  for  that  period,  are  as  truly  migrants 
as  the  early  Russian  colonists  who  settled  ter- 
ritories east  of  the  Urals,  or  as  the  Tatars  who 
travel  from  Central  Asia  in  order  to  wait  at 
table  in  the  hotels  of  St.  Petersburg.  And  it 
may  be  more  than  a  political  instinct  that  leads 
so  many  Russians  to  exchange  habitat  with 
these  swarthy  sons  of  the  desert.  What  espe- 
cially surprises  a  foreigner  unaccustomed  in 
Western  Europe  to  eastern  aspects  of  migration 
is  the  very  large  number  of  Russians  domiciled 
on  the  banks  of  the  Neva,  whose  homes  may  be 
at  a  distance  of  thousands  of  versts ;  equally 
striking  is  the  apparent  ease  with  which  even 
the  poorest  peasants  make  their  way  from  one 
end  of  this  vast  empire  to  the  other.  The  ef- 
fect of  great  extent  of  territory  in  enlarging 
one's  ideas  of  travel  is  a  common  experience ; 
the  Russian  never  seems  more  at  home  than 
when  en  voyage.  Whether  in  the  telega,  the 
railway  carriage,  or  the  steamboat,  he  rarely  be- 
trays consciousness  either  of  distance  or  of  di- 
vorce from  any  particular  part  of  the  territory 


24  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

which  he  calls  his  fatherland.  The  lines  of 
railway  seem  at  times  to  encourage  wide  views 
of  this  kind,  since  some  of  them,  in  their  effort 
to  compass  vast  distances,  ignore  large  cities 
lying  almost  directly  in  their  path.  Thus  the 
Russian  locomotive  is  made  to  pass  within  two 
miles  or  less  of  such  important  centres  of  popu- 
lation as  Tver,  Orol,  and  Kursk.  It  is  note- 
worthy that  the  word  for  "play"  in  Russian 
literally  means  "  to  walk."  A  child  told  that 
when  a  lesson  is  over  it  shall  "  go  to  walk  "  (idi 
gulyaf)  anticipates  play,  not  promenade.  A 
wife  unfaithful  to  her  husband  is  said  to  "  walk 
away  "  from  him  (gulyaet  ot  muzha). 

The  evidence  of  language  ought  not  to  be 
lightly  passed  over.  It  will  be  found,  as  a  rule, 
that  wherever  the  racial  habits  and  physical 
peculiarities  of  a  people  tend  to  create  settled 
forms  of  social  life;  to  discourage  movement 
and  lead  to  the  aggregation  of  masses  in  partic- 
ular districts  and  centres ;  to  cause  attachment 
to  particular  parts  of  a  country  apart  from  at- 
tachment to  it  as  a  whole,  —  there  dialects  will 
inevitably  come  into  existence.  The  circum- 
stances are  somewhat  analogous  to  those  under 
which  pools  and  lagoons,  originally  deposited 
by  a  main  stream,  but  finally  severed  from  it, 
suffer  from  the  cutting  of  their  connection  with 
the  fresh  waters.     In  countries  where  there  is 


NOMADIC  SURVIVALS.  25 

no  migration  to  preserve  the  homogeneousness 
of  the  spoken  tongue,  districts  become  isolated 
from  districts,  towns  from  towns,  people  from 
people.  There  being  no  general  diffusion  of 
the  standard  customs  of  speech,  differentiations 
take  place,  and  from  small  departures  the 
change  goes  on,  until  the  people  of  one  district 
or  county  become  with  difficulty  intelligible  to 
those  of  another.  Such  a  process  has  taken 
place  in  almost  all  the  older  countries  of  Europe, 
notably  in  Greece,  Italy,  Germany,  and  France. 
The  case  of  England  is  also  of  good  illustrative 
value.  The  Saxon  heptarchy  in  that  country 
was  once  a  heptarchy  of  dialects.  Even  to-day 
it  needs  a  special  study  to  qualify  for  reading 
in  the  Yorkshire,  Lancashire,  and  Somersetshire 
varieties  of  the  spoken  tongue.  A  cockney 
brought  up  within  the  sound  of  Bow  Bells 
would  be  lingually  far  more  at  home  in  New 
York  than  in  the  cottage  of  many  a  Rochdale 
cotton  operative.  Let  us  now  turn  to  European 
Russia.  Here  is  a  country  larger  than  all  the 
rest  of  Europe  put  together,  yet  utterly  devoid 
of  dialects.1  From  the  Baltic  to  the  Caspian, 
from  the  Krim  to  the  North  Sea,  wherever  Great 
Russian  is  spoken  by  Great   Russians,  its  pro- 

1  Polish,  developed  under  different  conditions,  has  a  number  of 
dialects,  but  is  a  member  of  the  Slavic  family  —  an  independent 
speech,  and  not  a  dialect  of  Great  Russian.  Nor  is  Little  Russian 
a  dialect  in  the  usual  acceptation  of  the  term. 


26  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

nunciation  is  practically  the  same.1  And  it  is 
this  capacity  for  being  intelligible  over  a  very 
wide  area  that  is  one  of  the  characteristic  fea- 
tures of  Turanian  (Asiatic)  languages.  An 
Osmanli  from  Constantinople  can,  it  is  said, 
make  himself  understood  by  a  Yakut  on  the 
Lena.  Ethnologists,  while  not  accepting  this 
statement  without  qualification,  admit  that  the 
Turkish  languages,  when  separated  by  enor- 
mous distances,  are  strangely  alike.2 

Nor  is  this  all.  In  its  very  texture  and  com- 
position, the  Russian  language  bears  witness  to 
the  conditions  under  which  Slav  development 
took  place.     Max  Muller  writes :  — 

"  It  is  an  indispensable  requirement  in  a  nomad  lan- 
guage that  it  should  be  intelligible  to  many,  though 
their  intercourse  be  but  scanty.  It  requires  tradi- 
tions, society,  and  literature  to  maintain  forms  which 
can  no  longer  be  analyzed  at  once.  ...  In  the  ever- 
shifting  state  of  a  nomadic  society,  no  debased  coin 
can  be  tolerated  in  language,  no  obscure  legend  ac- 
cepted on  trust.  The  metal  must  be  pure  and  the 
legend  distinct,  that  the  one  may  be  weighed  and  the 
other,  if  not  deciphered,  at  least  recognized  .as  a  well- 
known  guarantee.  Hence  the  small  proportion  of 
irregular  forms  in  all  agglutinative  languages." 

Now,  Russian  is  not  a  nomad  tongue,  but  a 

1  The  enunciation  of  the  o  is  not  always  uniform. 

2  Volkerkunde,  by  Oscar  Peschel. 


NOMADIC  SURVIVALS.  27 

member  of  the  Indo-European  family  of  lan- 
guages, yet  some  of  its  peculiarities  approximate 
in  a  striking  manner  to  those  described  as  req- 
uisite to  the  speech  of  a  wandering  people.  The 
agglutinative  power  of  the  language  is  noticed 
by  Professor  Sayce,1  who  further  observes :  "  In 
Russian  the  participles  have  replaced  the  aorist 
and  imperfect,  which  have  also  been  lost  in 
Ruthenian,  though  retained  in  Servian  and  Bul- 
garian ;  and  in  this  change  we  may  perhaps 
trace  the  influence  of  those  Tatar  tribes  whose 
blood  enters  so  largely  into  that  of  the  modern 
Russian  community."  2  But  the  testimony  may 
be  carried  much  further  than  the  extent  to 
which  Professor  Sayce  draws  upon  it.  Take 
the  case  of  irregular  forms,  of  which  we  have 
seen  nomad  languages  to  be  so  intolerant.  The 
tongues  of  settled  races  are  overrun  with  them. 
French  has  72  irregular  verbs,  Romaic  88, 
Swedish  141,  German  217,  Italian  514.  The 
number  of  irregular  verbs  in  Russian  isJL3.  It 
is  requisite  to  the  language  of  a  migratory  peo- 
ple that  its  forms  shall  be  intelligible  at  a 
glance  —  that  as  little  shall  be  left  to  the  con- 
text as  possible.  Russian  leaves  nothing  to  the 
context.     "  Love  "  in  English  may  be  either  a 

1  Introduction  to  the  Science  of  Language,  vol.  ii.,  p.  95. 

2  I  quote  Professor  Sayce's  statement  for  philological  rather  than 
for  historic  purposes. 


28  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

verb  or  a  noun.  The  noun  in  Russian  is  "  lyu- 
bov ; "  the  verb  "  lyubit."  Russian  verbs,  more- 
over, go  armed  with  a  whole  paraphernalia  of 
variations,  insuring  a  closeness  of  analysis,  an 
exactness  of  definition,  and  a  general  intelli- 
gibility that  in  most  modern  Indo-European 
tongues  would  appear  altogether  superfluous. 
For  a  learner  to  use  accurately  a  Russian  verb, 
he  must  first  decide  whether  he  wishes  to  ex- 
press completed  action,  incompleted  action, 
single  action,  plurality  of  action,  single  per- 
fect action,  or  commencing  action.  Supposing 
"  spoke,"  the  past  tense  of  speak,  were  Russian, 
the  choice  would  lie  between  such  forms  as 
"  waspoke  "  ("  I  spoke  "  —  completed  action),. 
"  spwke  "  (  "  I  spoke  once  "  —  sem  elf  active), 
"  spavoke  "  ("  I  spoke  more  than  once  "  —  iter- 
ative), "zaspoke"  ("  I  began  to  speak"  — 
commencing  action),  and  "spoke"  ("I  was 
speaking  "  —  incompleted  action).  This  striv- 
ing after  precision  and  intelligibility  is  further 
seen  in  nouns  expressing  relationship.  Instead 
of  using  forms  possessing  a  certain  inter-resem- 
blance, such  as  "  father-in-law,"  "  mother-in- 
law,"  "  beau-pere"  "  beau-frere"  etc.,  the  Rus- 
sian language  has  separate  terms  for  presenting 
the  distinctions  between  the  father  of  the  wife 
and  the  father  of  the  husband,  the  mother  of 
the  wife  and  the  mother  of  the  husband,  and  so 


NOMADIC  SURVIVALS.  29 

on,  throughout  the  inter-relationships  of  blood 
and  marriage.  Russian  patronymics  illustrate 
the  same  habits  of  language.  Greater  closeness 
of  description  is  obtained  in  names  by  adding 
the  paternal  designation,  so  that,  instead  of  a 
man  being  called  Peter  Orlov,  or  a  woman  Mary 
Romanov,  he  becomes  "  John  Orlov's  Peter," 
and  she  "  Vassily  Romanov's  Mary." 1  I  shall 
only  add  that  in  Russian  there  are  few  homo- 
nyms, and  an  almost  complete  absence  of  pho- 
netic resemblances  like  "  wright,"  "  right," 
"  rite,"  "  write,"  etc. 

The  eating  habits  of  modern  Russians  are  not 
altogether  without  traces  of  the  influence  of 
primitive  custom  and  race  environment.  It  is 
well  known  that  life  on  the  plains  —  whether  it 
be  spent  in  hunting  or  have  a  pastoral  charac- 
ter —  leads  to  irregularity  in  eating.  Such  an 
existence  tends,  owing  to  the  long  fasts  often 
involved,  to  encourage  the  merging  of  several 
small  meals  into  a  single  substantial  one,  capa- 
ble of  carrying  the  hunter  or  agriculturist  over 
the  needs  of,  say,  a  whole  day.  Herberstein,2 
writing  in  the  sixteenth  century,  speaks  of  Rus- 
sians who,  having  had  one  good  dinner,  abstained 
from  meat  for  two  or  three  days.     Meals  at 

1  Literally,  "  The  Johnian  Peter  Orlov,"  "the  Vassilyan  Mary- 
Romanov." 

2  German  ambassador  to  the  court  of  Ivan  Vassilievich  at 
Moscow. 


30  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

stated  hours,  at  the  rate  of  three  and  four  in 
the  day,  could  only  be  taken  when  a  regular 
division  had  been  made  in  the  hours  of  daily 
labor,  and  this  division  implies  a  well-developed 
urban  organization.  In  Russia  a  tendency  lin- 
gers to  postpone  eating  until  the  middle  of  the 
day,  —  that  is  to  say,  until  the  midday  meal. 
Breakfast  is  almost  ignored  by  large  classes  of 
the  population.  It  rarely  consists  of  more  than 
a  glass  of  weak  tea,  with  a  small  morsel  of 
bread  or  cake  added  on  rare  occasions.  Yet 
on  the  strength  of  such  light  pabulum  as  this  I 
have  seen  active  officials  and  business  men  sally 
forth  for  five  hours  of  the  most  arduous  work 
of  the  day.  For  tea,  which  is  a  meal  scarcely 
more  substantial  than  breakfast,  there  is  no  dis- 
tinctive name  in  Russian,  the  invitation  to  it 
being  simply,  "  Come  to  drink  tea !  "  x 

The  noticeable  characteristic  of  Russian  food 
is  the  ease  with  which  it  is  prepared,  and  the 
facility  with  which  it  may  be  carried  about. 
The  consumption  of  dried  fish  is  exceedingly 
large ;  very  small  kinds  of  fish  are  eaten  raw. 
The  joke  about  candle-eating  in  Russia  probably 
arose  out  of  the  fact  that  in  the  territory  of  the 
river  Kura  the  minoga  (petromyson  fluviatilis),  & 
sort  of  fluvial  lamprey,  is  dried  for  use  as  a  can- 
dle or  torch.     The  native  cookery,  on  the  other 

^  i  "Idftygchaipit." 


NOMADIC  SURVIVALS.  31 

hand,  is  of  the  simplest.  The  people,  for  the 
most  part,  eat  bread  without  butter.  In  "  table 
manners "  the  Russians  are  fond  of  excelling. 
Yet,  under  special  circumstances,  two  persons, 
falling  to  with  fork,  may  eat  out  of  a  single 
plate  without  committing  any  breach  of  social 
propriety.  This  survival  has  a  smack  of  ata- 
vism about  it,  since  in  the  sixteenth  and  seven- 
teenth century,  as  mentioned  by  Mr.  Kostoma- 
rov,1  it  was  the  custom  to  seat  guests  at  table 
at  the  rate  of  two  to  a  plate.  The  Russian 
habit  of  sleeping  after  meals  has  a  still  higher 
historical  justification.  That  severe  code  of 
domestic  morals,  the  "  Domostro'i,"  2  expressly 
warns  the  guest  not  to  remain  too  long,  in 
order  that  the  host's  postprandial  siesta  may 
not  be  interfered  with.  Why  this  fashion  of 
midday  slumber  survived  in  Russia  will  be  best 
set  forth  in  the  succeeding  chapter :  that  it 
would  speedily  disappear  amid  the  feverish  ur- 
ban and  industrial  activities  of  Western  Europe 
is  evident. 

Two  habits  remain,  which  there  is  the  strong- 
est ground  for  describing  as  primarily  due  to 
the  influences  of  steppe  life  upon  the  physical 
organism.  The  Russians  have  a  marked  aver- 
sion to  water,  and  a  liking  not  less  strong  for 
tea.     The  same  choice  of  tea  as  beverage,  with 

l  "  Ocherk,"  etc.  2  From  the  fifteenth  century. 


32  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

the  same  dislike  of  water  as  its  exciting  cause, 
is  found  amongst  the  races  of  the  desert  and 
plain  in  Asia,  notably  the  Tatars,  Kalmucks, 
and  Khirgiz.  In  categorical,  if  somewhat  unfor- 
tunate connection  with  the  predilection  for  tea 
stands  the  habit  of  spitting ;  whatever  this  may- 
mean  in  other  countries,  when  Russians  expec- 
torate it  is  a  sign  of  disgust.  In  his  romance, 
"  Smoke,"  Turgeniev  mentions  the  publication 
at  Heidelberg  by  a  group  of  Russian  emigrants 
of  a  journal,  on  the  title-page  of  which  ap- 
peared the  words,  "  A  tout  venant  je  crache." 
The  habit  is  frequently  pointed  to  in  Slav  lit- 
erature. As  I  write  Zacharjasiewicz's  Polish 
novel  "  Na  Kresach  "  is  lying  before  me.  On 
the  first  page  of  the  first  chapter  occur  these 
words :  "  Maciejaszek  splunal  trzy  razy  i  prze- 
zegnal  sie,"  —  "  Maciejaszek  spat  three  times 
and  crossed  himself."  The  "Domostro'i"  en- 
joins its  readers  not  to  spit  carelessly  at  table, 
but  rather  to  spit  with  caution,  and  then  to 
destroy  the  evidences  of  the  act  with  the  foot. 
A  habit  that  could  meet  with  such  realistic  justi- 
fication as  this  from  the  pen  of  an  ecclesiastical 
dignitary  and  state  counselor  must  have  had  a 
more  solid  ethnological  foundation  than  that  of 
mere  coarseness  of  manners.  Are  we  not  justi- 
fied in  seeking  its  origin  in  some  wide  steppe  or 
desert  land,  where  the  flying  sand-dust  was  with 


NOMADIC  SURVIVALS.  33 

difficulty  prevented  from  entering  eyes,  ears, 
nostrils,  and  mouth,  and  where  an  act  of  expec- 
toration became  an  act  of  cleanliness  not  un- 
naturally associated  with  a  temporary  feeling 
of  disgust? 

On  the  whole,  the  justification  seems  abun- 
dant and  irresistible  that,  partly  because  of 
racial  and  inherited  tendencies,  partly  owing  to 
influence  of  environment  and  race-intermin- 
gling, as  well  as  to  contagiousness  of  habits, 
manners,  and  customs,  and  partly,  as  the  more 
secular  cause,  in  consequence  of  the  general  cir- 
cumstances of  a  peculiar  national  development, 
the  Russians  are  more  remarkable  than  any 
other  people  of  Aryan  blood  for  the  ease  with 
which  they  change  the  place  of  their  domicile, 
and  for  the  migrant  character  of  their  lives  and 
activities.  /It  is  fair,  moreover,  to  say  that 
these  characteristics  have  played  a  highly  im- 
portant part  in  giving  its  form,  its  institutions, 
and  its  difficulties,  to  the  modern  Russian  state. 
And  while,  on  the  one  hand,  migrant  habits 
have  tended  to  stimulate  that  pride  of  individ- 
uality, that  love  of  liberty  and  of  free  institu- 
tions which,  as  I  shall  hereafter  show,  form  the 
foundation  of  the  Slav  character  and  genius, 
on  the  other  they  have  weakened  the  resist- 
ance of  the  masses  and  facilitated  the  arrange- 
ments  of    absolute   power.  ,  Russian    energies 


OF  THE     ^ 

UNIVERSITY 


THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

have  been  largely  dispersed  in  steppe  and  plain. 
Engaged  in  colonizing  vast  tracts  of  virgin  ter- 
ritory rather  than  in  improving  the  apparatus 
and  increasing  the  comfort  of  life  within  the 
confines  of  towns,  they  have  had  few  opportu- 
nities of  bringing  into  existence  any  robust 
conception  of  urban  independence  and  civic 
rights.  This  phenomenon  of  apolism  —  this 
meagre  development  of  towns  and  town  activi- 
ties —  came  to  be  the  natural  corollary  of  mi- 
grant, unsettled  habits.  How  it  manifested 
itself,  and  what  were  its  results,  will  be  shown 
in  the  succeeding  chapter. 


APOLISM. 


The  facts  of  city  life  in  Russia,  whether 
regarded  as  results  or  merely  as  concomitant 
phenomena,  will  be  found  quite  in  harmony 
with  the  conditions  of  national  development 
already  set  forth.  Circumstances  inimical  to 
the  spirit  of  urban  life  have  hindered  the 
growth  of  Russian  towns  from  the  first.  The 
early  Slavs  not  only  were  without  conception 
of  city  existence,  but  did  not  even  live  in 
houses.  Karamzin 1  mentions  the  names  of  four 
tribes  of  Russian  Slavs  who  dwelt  habitually  in 
the  woods;  the  same  historian  cites  testimony 
concerning  Slavs  of  the  Danube,  who  had 
their  retreats  in  wild,  marshy,  and  inaccessible 
places. 2  Another  writer  describes  the  Slavs  as 
possessing  neither  horses,  arms,  nor  houses,  and 
as  protecting  themselves  from  the  weather  by 
means  of  interlaced  branches  of  trees.  It  is 
tolerably  certain  that  at  a  somewhat  later  period 
than  that  here  referred  to  the  Russians  lived 

1  Istoria  goeudarstva  rossiiskavo. 

2  "Paludes  sylvasque  pro  civitatibus  habent."  Jordan.  M. 
Popul. 


36  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

in  a  highly  primitive  form  of  oppida,  known  in 
the  modern  language  as  gorodishchay  ;  remains 
of  these  structures,  consisting  of  ramparts  of 
earth  surmounted  with  palisading,  are  found  to 
this  day,  usually  on  eminences,  the  high  banks 
of  rivers,  or  in  other  positions  equally  strategic. 
Of  one  thing  we  may  be  certain,  —  the  first 
Russian  houses  must  have  had  wood  as  the 
material  of  their  construction,  since  stone  was 
almost  unattainable,  while  the  supply  of  tim- 
ber, the  country  having  a  plenitude  of  forests, 
was  practically  inexhaustible.  It  is  impossi- 
ble, therefore,  to  connect  the  materials  of  early 
Russian  housebuilding  with  the  habits  of  the 
builders.  It  may  even  well  enough  be  that  the 
enforced  use  of  wood,  leading  to  the  perpet- 
ual conflagrations  that  everywhere  light  up  the 
pages  of  Russian  history,  helped  to  intensify 
the  unsettled  character  of  the  national  life. 
The  popular  belief,  transmitted  to  the  present 
day,  that  every  house  in  Russia  is  destined  soon 
or  late  to  be  burned  to  the  ground,  was  not,  at 
any  rate,  calculated  to  strengthen  affection  for 
a  particular  domicile. 

Etymologically,  the  Russian  city,  or  gorod,  is 
still  an  "  inclosure,"  or  place  inclosed,  corre- 
sponding with  the  West-European  bourg.  For 
town  the  Russians  write  posad,  the  equivalent 
of   stadt   (statte)   in   German    and   miasto   in 


APOLISM.  37 

Polish;  that  is  to  say,  "  place ;"  while  the 
Russian  village  is  simply  derevnya,  or  "the 
wooden."  But  the  characteristic  features  of 
the  Russian  gorod  only  appear  when  we  ex- 
amine the  city  in  its  relation  to  the  country  at 
large.  Compared  with  urban  growth  in  west- 
ern Europe,  town  life  in  Russia  is  strikingly 
insignificant.  Scarcely  a  tenth  part  of  the  pop- 
ulation of  European  Russia  is  urban ;  in  Eng- 
land nearly  half  the  people  live  in  the  towns 
and  cities.  Nor  is  the  tenth  part  named  any 
fixed  quantity.  It  merely  represents  the  time 
when  urban  Russia  is  fullest,  owing  to  the 
periodical  influx  of  a  part  of  the  population 
which  is,  strictly  speaking,  neither  urban  nor 
rural,  but  belongs  to  both  country  and  town. 

Gogol  must  have  remarked  this  insignificance 
of  the  urban  element ;  for  in  his  novel,  "  Dead 
Souls,"  the  humorist  compares  Russian  cities  to 
"  tiny  dots  that  indistinctly  mark  the  centre  of 
some  vast  plain."1  That  the  peculiarity  is  not 
confined  to  one  branch  of  the  Slav  family  may 
be  gathered  from  an  expression,  singularly 
identical  with  that  of  Gogol,  by  which  Hiippe  2 
compares  the  cities  of  the  old  Polish  Slavs  to 
"drops  of  oil  on  a  pond."     Urban  phenomena 

1  See  Gogol's  Complete  Works  (in  Russian).  St.  Petersburg, 
1880,  vol.  iii.,  p.  230. 

2  Verfassung  der  Republih  Polen. 


38  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

are  generically  the  same  in  Great  Russia  and 
in  Poland.  The  appearances  that  seem  to  con- 
fer upon  Polish  cities  an  urban  existence  as 
well  developed  as  that  of  the  towns  of  western 
Europe  are  illusive. 1  There  are  few  genuinely 
Slav  towns  in  Poland.  With  populations  largely 
composed  of  Jews  and  Germans,  Polish  cities 
belong  neither  to  the  old  nor  to  the  new  order 
of  urban  phenomena,  but  form  an  indescribable 
compound  of  both. 

In  Russia  eleven  cities  are  usually  spoken  of 
with  a  population  of  over  50,000  inhabitants. 
For  an  empire  so  vast  as  that  of  Russia,  here 
is  a  state  of  things  that,  in  the  light  of  the 
urban  statistics  of  western  Europe,  seems  to 
border  on  the  ridiculous.  And  when  care 
is  taken  to  eliminate  foreign  elements,  urban 
Russia  becomes  more  insignificant  still.  The 
population  of  the  capital  itself  does  not  yet 
number  a  million ;  of  its  860,000 2  inhabitants 
fully  100,000  are  foreigners.  Moscow,  with  a 
population  of  about  750,000,  has  a  colony  of 
15,000  Germans,  not  to  say  anything  of  other 
nationalities.  Odessa,  with  150,000  inhabit- 
ants, is  largely  foreign.  Kishinev,  with  130,- 
000,  Kiev,  with  76,000,  and  Berdichev,  with 
55,000    are   all  largely  Jewish  and  German  in 

1  See  M.  Leroy  Beaulieu's  L' Empire  des  Tsars  et  les  Musses. 

2  Census  of  1884. 


APOLISM.  39 

the  character  of  their  population.  Of  the  re- 
maining five  "largest  towns,"  Saratov,  with 
96,000,  is  to  some  extent  German ;  Kazan, 
largely  Tatar.  It  will  be  found,  in  fact,  that 
very  few  of  the  eleven  towns  have  risen  to 
their  present  state  of  development  save  by  rea- 
son of  some  special  conditions  of  growth  prac- 
tically removing  them  from  the  list  of  purely 
Slav  cities.  Tula,  a  city  in  the  same  category, 
has  the  imperial  gun  factory,  and  supplies  the 
Russian  people  with  their  samovars.  Both 
Odessa  and  Nikolaiev  owe  much  to  their  posi- 
tion on  the  Black  Sea.  The  Volga  naturally 
gives  local  impulses  to  urban  development  in  a 
country  practically  without  seaboard.  Saratov 
is  a  conspicuous  example  of  this  kind  of  growth. 
Samara,  also  a  Volga  "  port,"  affords  a  still  bet- 
ter illustration  of  conditions  that  distinguish 
these  riparian  cities  from  towns  in  the  interior 
of  Russia.  Situation  and  foreign  capital,  as 
well  as  Slav  enterprise,  have  raised  Samara 
from  insignificance  to  a  position  in  which  it 
aspires  to  become  a  sort  of  Chicago  for  the 
southeastern  governments.  Tsarftsyn,  another 
Volga  city,  owes  its  comparatively  sudden  de- 
velopment to  the  naphtha  wells  at  Baku,  as 
well  as  to  the  Swedish  enterprise  which  has 
made  it  the  great  entrepdt  of  the  petroleum 
trade  in  Russia.     There  is,  indeed,  a  foreign 


40  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

character  about  most  of  the  urban  and  trading 
activities  of  this  part  of  the  country.  The 
great  brewer  of  southeastern  Russia  is  of 
German  nationality.  In  towns  like  Kazan, 
Astrakhan,  and  Tsaritsyn,  I  found  the  smaller 
industries  carried  on  largely  by  Persians,  Ta- 
tars, Calmucks,  and  Germans.  I  remember  see- 
ing a  whilom  Frankfort  shoemaker  plying  his 
awl  in  the  shadow  of  a  mosque.  Out  on  the 
steppe,  three  miles  from  Tsaritsyn,  when  driv- 
ing through  an  encampment  of  khibitkas,  I  en- 
countered a  German  baker  supplying  his  nomad 
customers  with  bread. 

But  the  inherent  weakness  of  urban  life  in 
Russia — the  inability,  even  under  the  most 
favorable  circumstances,  of  the  pure  Slav  town 
to  maintain  the  conditions  necessary  to  its 
healthy  development  —  is  nowhere  better  seen 
than  in  the  case  of  the  old  capital  itself.  Apart 
from  its  German  colony,  Moscow  is  the  most 
genuinely  Russian  city  that  can  be  named. 
Hundreds  of  proverbial  sayings  testify  to  its 
antiquity  and  to  the  veneration  in  which  it  is 
held  by  the  people. 1  "  Moscow  was  built  by 
the  ages,  Petersburg  by  millions,"  runs  one. 
Another  is  the  famous  "  Moscow,  white-stoned, 

1  A  highly  interesting  collection  of  proverbs  and  sayings  relat- 
ing to  Moscow  may  be  found  in  a  little  work  entitled  Moskva  v 
rodnoy  poesii.     St.  P.,  1882. 


APOLISM.  41 

golden-domed,  loyal,  loquacious,  hospitable,  and 
orthodox."  In  a  third,  the  city  is  said  to  be 
"  renowned  for  its  virgins,  its  bells,  and  its 
Jcalaches."  2  And  in  addition  to  its  fame  as  the 
capital  of  the  old  Muscovite  dominion,  the  city 
has  the  proud  distinction,  that  even  holy  Kiev 
cannot  dispute  with  it,  of  being  the  great  heart 
of  the  national  religion.  In  Russia  alone  the 
Moscow  cult  has  endowed  native  literature  with 
43  poems,  34  historical  works  and  13  dramas 
and  operas,  all  of  them  the  work  of  the  nation's 
most  famous  literary  men.  Moscow,  besides 
being  a  city  of  churches, 2  has  816  factories,  in 
which  74,000  workmen  are  employed,  and  en- 
joys the  reputation  of  being  the  industrial  me- 
tropolis of  Russia.  Yet,  notwithstanding  all  this 
prestige,  all  these  favoring  circumstances,  Mos- 
cow has  no  resources  of  population  and  no  ur- 
ban vitality  that  can  justly  be  called  its  own. 
The  number  of  deaths  in  the  city  every  year 
exceeds  that  of  the  births.  The  resultant  defi- 
ciency is  more  than  made  up  by  immigration, 
and  it  is  by  the  aid  of  this  influx  from  all  parts 
of  the  empire  that  the  old  capital  is  enabled  to 
put  on  an  appearance  of  progress. 3     Moscow  is 

1  A  kind  of  bread  roll. 

2  The  proverbial  number  of  churches  in  Moscow  is  "40  times 
40,"  the  real  number  about  400,  exclusive  of  private  and  cemetery 
chapels. 

*  A  similar  state  of  things  prevails  in  St.  Petersburg. 


42  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

none  the  less  an  artificial  creation.  Its  spurious 
development  is  mainly  due  to  habits  and  move- 
ments that  have  done  little  in  Russia  to  favor 
lasting  and  healthy  urban  growth.  It  is  a  spec- 
tacle rather  than  a  city,  a  resting-place  rather 
than  a  residence,  a  convenient  pied  a  terre  for 
the  migrant  Russian  far  from  his  home  on  the 
great  plain. 

The  conclusion  is  inevitable  that  the  modern 
conception  of  city  life  and  its  concomitant  activi- 
ties had  to  be  imported  from  without.  Living 
under  roofs  did  not  at  once  naturalize  it  amongst 
the  Slavs.  "  Every  one,"  writes  Karamzin,  de- 
scribing the  beginning  of  the  domiciliary  pe- 
riod, "  made  a  hut  for  himself  at  a  little  distance 
from  his  neighbors',  in  order  that  he  might  live 
the  more  comfortably  and  with  the  less  danger." 
But  afterwards,  "  beginning  to  feel  themselves 
more  necessary  to  each  other,  the  Slavs  erected 
their  dwellings  nearer  together,  thus  bringing 
settlements  into  existence ;  while  others,  seeing 
fine  cities  in  foreign  countries,  lost  their  love  for 
the  dark  woods."  The  development  of  the  set- 
tlement into  the  town  was  really  a  long  and 
tedious  process  of  evolution  ;  the  multiplication 
of  the  new  urban  phenomenon,  when  the  begin- 
ning of  town  life  finally  appeared,  was  retarded 
by  the  habits  of  the  people  and  by  the  exactions 
of  the  governors.     Many  centuries  elapsed  be- 


APOLISM.  43 

fore  any  real  need  was  felt  for  towns.  The 
agriculturist,  with  tastes  of  the  simplest  kind, 
produced  nothing  that  he  did  not  want  for  his 
own  use,  and  wanted  nothing  that  he  could  not 
produce  in  the  open  plain.  Side  by  side  with 
his  knowledge  of  agriculture  was  his  expertness 
in  all  the  industrial  arts  necessary  to  secure  the 
comfort  of  his  household.  His  domicile,  which 
he  could  build  himself,  was  a  hive  of  multifa- 
rious industries  that  held  out  long  against  the 
principle  of  the  division  of  labor,  and  are  in 
some  respects  triumphant  over  it  to  this  day. 
Clothes  were  manufactured  at  home  with  the 
same  celerity  as  ploughs,  and  when  laborers 
were  needed  there  were  always  lusty  sons  eager 
to  grow  as  many-sided  in  the  business  of  life  as 
their  fathers.  The  town,  save  as  a  strategic 
point,  could  thus  be  dispensed  with.  On  the 
other  hand,  migratory  movements  caused  the 
desertion  of  numerous  settlements  and  towns, 
and  the  consequent  reversion  of  many  promising 
urban  oases  to  the  domination  of  the  steppe. 
At  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Alexis  Michaflovich 
Russian  hamlets  and  villages  were  still  so  ridic- 
ulously small  that  some  of  them  had  as  few  as 
ten  dvors,  or  courtyards,  while  there  were  others 
so  diminutive  as  to  possess  no  more  than  three, 
two,  and  even  one  of  these  domestic  inclosures.1 

1  Karamzin. 


44  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

In  the  time  of  Peter,  out  of  a  population  of  30,- 
000,000  only  300,000  were  dwellers  in  towns. 
Later,  when  Catherine  II.  endeavored  to  foster 
urban  development,  not  a  few  of  the  artificial 
creations  of  her  uhaz  soon  became  uninhabited, 
were  destroyed  by  fire,  or  reclaimed  by  the 
larger  life  of  the  plain.  Catherine's  real  activ- 
ity in  this  direction  expended  itself  in  attempts 
to  turn  mere  villages  into  cities,  with  a  view  to 
tht  '  ati  m  of  seats  for  resident  officials  in- 
truded with  the  carrying  out  of  her  new  scheme 
of  local  government.  Such  of  them  as  have 
survived  are  villages  to  this  day. 

To  natural  causes  like  industry  and  trade  no 
really  Russian  town  can  be  said  to  owe  its  ex- 
istence. Urban  growth  was  mainly,  almost 
wholly,  the  result  of  some  form  of  government 
initiative.  In  the  earlier  periods  of  the  national 
history  towns  were  created  for  strategic  pur- 
poses ;  later,  administrative  necessities  called 
them  into  being.  The  scheme  for  the  new  mu- 
nicipal organization  of  1870  mentioned  five  hun- 
dred and  ninety-five  towns.  Of  these  scarcely 
a  sixth  have  the  character  of  purely  industrial 
centres ;  in  almost  a  third  occupations  are  partly 
industrial,  partly  agricultural ;  the  inhabitants 
of  the  remainder  devote  themselves  to  agricul- 
ture, the  smaller  industries  being  carried  on  in 
a  few  cases  by  people  consigned  to  them  by 


APOLISM.  45 

scarcity  of  land.  Herr  Schlozer  writes  that  "  up 
to  the  middle  of  the  ninth  century  no  single 
town  worthy  of  the  name  existed  in  the  whole 
of  northern  Russia."  Speaking  in  1873  of  the 
state  of  urban  development  Herr  Schwanen- 
bach 1  said :  — 

"  There  are  whole  governments,  such,  for  example, 
as  Archangel,  Olonets,  Vologda,  and  Pensa,  which, 
with  the  exception  of  the  official  capitals,  have  no 
town  deserving  that  appellation.  There  are,  more- 
over, government  towns  like  Petrosavodsk,  Pensa, 
Chernigov,  Smolensk,  that  would  degenerate  into 
mere  villages  were  the  government  officials  from 
whom  they  take  their  importance  removed." 

The  fact  that  this  description  needs  no  sub- 
stantial modification  to-day  shows  that  urban 
life  in  the  north  of  European  Russia  has  been 
all  but  stagnant  since  the  ninth  century.2 

So  far  I  have  considered  the  town  as  con- 
trasted with  the  country,  —  compared  urban 
phenomena  in  Russia  with  their  rural  surround- 
ings and  west  European  prototypes.  What  the 
Russian  town  is  intrinsically  cannot  easily  be 
realized  without  personal  experience.   The  insig- 

1  JRussische  Revue,  vol.  iv. 

2  Of  the  towns  mentioned  in  the  scheme  of  1870,  27  had  a  popu- 
lation of  1000;  74  between  1000  and  2000  inhabitants ;  194  between 
2000  and  5000;  179  between  5000  and  10,000;  55  between  10,000 
and  15,000;  35  between  15,000  and  25,000;  23  between  25,000  and 
50,000 ;  and  8  over  50,000. 


46  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

nificant  figure  cut  in  the  great  plains  by  even  the 
larger  cities  is  but  imperfectly  conveyed  by  mere 
reminiscence  or  description.  Some  of  these 
centres  of  population  are  generally  lost  sight 
of  in  a  walk  of  twenty  minutes  into  the  sur- 
rounding steppe,  and  their  disappearance  is  all 
the  more  startling  to  the  unwary  traveler  be- 
cause of  the  smoothness  of  the  plain,  and  the 
absence  of  everything  capable  of  acting  as  an 
obstacle  to  vision.  Should  twilight  surprise 
him  in  his  wanderings,  the  dimness  of  the  land- 
scape suggests  marine  openness  in  a  very  strik- 
ing way.  The  far-off  horizon  becomes  the 
spectator's  sea-line;  the  city,  if  not  gone  alto- 
gether, seems  a  cliff  long  and  low,  with  some 
mimic  seaport  town  clinging  to  its  back ;  while 
the  lit-up  cottage  of  the  peasant  charioteer 
gleams  from  the  distance  like  a  welcome  pharos 
inviting  belated  wanderers  into  harbor. 

Or,  to  offer  another  illustration,  let  the  reader 
accompany  me  in  imagination  for  a  moonlight 
drive  along  the  post  road  in  one  of  the  south- 
eastern governments.  We  journey  for  hours  in 
the  gray  glimmer,  seeing  nothing  but  sky  and 
plain.  All  at  once  a  few  grayish,  dark  objects 
rise  up  suddenly  in  front ;  the  yamshchik  calls 
"  Derevnya  !  " l  and  we  thereupon  find  ourselves 
entering  a  village  by  a  road  fully  four  times 

i  Village. 


APOLISM.  47 

as  broad  as  an  English  highway  or  a  French 
grande  route.  The  course  may  lead  us  in  a 
straight  line,  or  may  have  a  dozen  zigzag  turn- 
ings in  it,  yet  it  remains  of  the  same  abnormal 
breadth  throughout.  The  village  itself  is  so 
vast  that  it  takes  our  driver  half  an  hour  or 
more  to  wind  us  through  it  at  full  speed ;  and 
when  at  last  we  emerge  again  into  the  open 
plain  the  straggling  collection  of  one-story  erec- 
tions in  wood  through  which  we  have  flitted 
seems  immediately  to  sink  back  into  the  earth 
and  disappear.  Thus,  if  the  height  of  the  Rus- 
sian city  is  insignificant,  its  extent  is  often  im- 
mense. I  have  sometimes  found  a  population 
of  a  few  hundred  persons  spread  over  an  area 
wider  than  that  of  many  an  English  borough 
returning  two  members  to  Parliament.  At  one 
period,  by  no  means  very  remote,  European 
Russia  the  country  was  simply  European  Rus- 
sia the  town  on  a  large  scale.  The  spaces  be- 
tween the  towns  were  the  roads,  and  the  Rus- 
sian felt  uneasy  until  he  had  traversed  them 
from  end  to  end.  And  to-day  there  is  no  urbs 
more  Russian  than  the  village  that  lies  on  the 
open  plain,  —  a  mere  double  row  of  houses, 
a  domiciliary  column  on  the  march,  or,  at  any 
rate,  a  sheltered  line  of  migration  inviting  to 
movement.  Let  me  add  that  precisely  of  this 
structure  and  form  is  the  one  popular  thorough- 


48  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

fare  in  all  Russia,  —  the  only  thoroughfare 
that  has  ever  achieved  a  reputation  in  native 
literature,  namely,  the  Nevsky  Prospect  at  St. 
Petersburg.1 

Russian  city  life  has  also  had  a  migratory 
character  in  its  political  aspects.  Slav  power 
in  European  Russia  frequently  changed  its  cen- 
tres of  administration.  The  capital  was  long  a 
movable  urban  dignity.  "A  strange  people, 
these  Russians ! "  wrote  Gogol,  in  a  playful 
mood.  "  First  they  have  their  capital  in  Kiev, 
but  there  it  is  too  warm ;  then  the  Russian  me- 
tropolis goes  to  Moscow,  where  it  is  not  cold 
enough ;  and  finally  Providence  gives  us  St. 
Petersburg."  2  Gogol  only  told  a  part  of  the 
truth,  since,  in  addition  to  its  presence  at  the 
three  cities  named,  the  Russian  capital  was  vir- 
tually at  Novgorod,  Pskov  and  Viatka.  The 
earlier  selection  of  sites  for  the  capital  depended 
mainly  upon  political  circumstances ;  the  choice 
truer  to  the  migrant  instincts  and  habits  of  the 
Russian  people  was  the  choice  of  St.  Petersburg. 
It  opened  a  door,  as  well  as  a  window,  upon 
Europe ;  it  connected  the  Nevsky  Prospect  with 
the  thoroughfares  of  the  settled  civilizations 
in  the  west. 

A  special   character  belongs  as  well  to  the 

1  See  Gogol's  sketch,  Nevsky  Prospect. 

2  Peterburgskiya  Zapiski. 


APOLISM.  49 

Russian  house  as  to  the  city.  Language  bears 
testimony  to  the  smallness  of  the  early  resi- 
dences of  the  Slavs,  since  izba,  the  word  which  in 
Russian  means  a  peasant's  domicile,  signifies  in 
Polish  (that  is  to  say,  in  a  language  that  better 
preserves  the  older  forms  of  Slavonic  speech 
than  does  Great  Russian)  simply  "  room  "  or 
"  apartment."  Peter's  love  of  small  rooms,  his 
embarrassment  in  spacious  and  high  apartments, 
were  characteristics  genuinely  Slav.  To  this 
day,  moreover,  the  least  costly  dwellings  are 
roughly  made  out  of  forest  timber  by  the 
dweller  himself ;  the  wooden  habitations  of 
merchants  and  people  of  the  middle  class  not 
only  lack  complexity  of  structure,  but  are  fur- 
nished in  the  simplest  fashion.  Beds  in  Russian 
country  houses  are  often  mere  couches,  or  even 
drawer-holding  chests  covered  with  rugs.  In 
some  of  the  best  hotels  they  are  barely  broad 
enough  to  prevent  a  sleeper  from  finding  his 
way  to  the  floor.  It  is  the  custom  throughout 
Russia  for  the  hirer  of  furnished  lodgings  to 
supply  his  own  bedclothes.  When  traveling 
long  distances  Russians,  delicate  women  not  ex- 
cepted, carry  pillows  with  them,  and  use  the 
seat  of  the  railway  carriage  as  a  bed.  Nor  is 
this  carelessness  on  the  score  of  sleeping  accom- 
modation any  mere  modern  trait  of  Russian  life. 
A  certain  George  Turbernile,  in  a  letter  to  Eng- 


50  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

land  "out of  Moscow,"  in  1568,  writes  the  follow- 
ing doggerel  concerning  the  traveler  in  Russia : — 

"He  is  wont  to  have  a  beares  skin  for  his  bed, 
And  must  instead  of  pillow  clap  his  saddle  to  his  head ; 
In  Russie  other  shift  there  is  not  to  be  had, 
For  where  the  bedding  is  not  good,  the  boalsters  are  too  bad." 

The  rhymester  then  attempts  an  explanation  : 

"  I  mused  very  much  what  made  them  so  to  lie, 
Unless  it  be  because  the  country  is  so  hard : 
They  feare  by  likeness  of  a  bed  theyr  bodj^es  would  be  mar'd." 

Pride  in  the  house  for  its  own  sake  is  a  sen- 
timent almost  unknown.  This  is  why,  as  a 
rule,  Russians  are  so  careless  about  their  domi- 
ciles, and  why  the  domiciles  so  often  wear  a  neg- 
lected look  to  the  foreigner  fresh  from  the  west. 
It  seems  so  uncommon  a  thing  in  Russia  for  a 
man  to  possess  his  own  house  that  the  language 
has  a  special  phrase  to  express  domiciliary  own- 
ership.1 Russian  servants  and  waiters  invariably 
enter  rooms  without  knocking,  as  if  intention- 
ally ignoring  such  obstacles  to  movement  as 
doors. 

The  house  of  the  noble,  the  country  house  of 
the  landed  proprietor,  is  not  always  a  genuine 
Slav  domicile.  Not  a  few  of  its  features  have 
been  borrowed  from  western  Europe.  The  real 
Russian  house  must  be  sought  far  off  from  the 
sound  of  the  French  and  German  language  — 
that  is  to  say,  amongst  the   peasantry.     The 

1 " Sobstvenny  dom."    Literally,  "one's  own  house." 


APOLISM.  51 

domiciles  of  the  poorer  belonging  to  this  class 
are  little  more  than  so  many  single  rooms.  I 
remember,  traveling  through  the  government 
of  Samara,  having  to  pass  a  night  in  a  house 
that  at  first  seemed  of  unusually  large  propor- 
tions, but  which,  on  my  entering,  at  once  as- 
sumed the  ordinary  aspect  of  the  Russian  izba. 
The  apartment,  swelled  in  my  imagination  to 
an  extra  room,  turned  out  to  be  quite  empty ; 
the  room  constituting  the  house  had  for  furni- 
ture a  huge  stove,  a  dozen  or  more  broad 
shelves  nailed  up,  one  over  the  other,  to  form 
the  bed  accommodation  of  the  household,  sev- 
eral rudely  fashioned  chairs,  a  table,  a  low 
wooden  settle,  and  the  icon  frame  in  an  angle 
of  the  apartment.  This  was  the  dwelling-place 
of  three  brothers,  two  of  whom  had  wives  and 
children. 

To  apolism,  then,  as  I  have  endeavored  to 
sketch  this  remarkable  phenomenon,  Russia 
owes  not  a  few  of  the  influences  by  which  its 
civilization  has  been  moulded.  Much  in  the 
Russian  character  arises  from  the  lack  of  those 
urban  associations  and  activities  felt  and  seen 
in  the  older  states  of  western  Europe.  Pride 
in  a  profession  or  trade  for  its  own  sake,  —  the 
result  of  that  minute  division  of  labor  brought 
about  by  high  urban  development,  —  does  not 
appear  to  exist  in  Russia.     In  its  place  one  no- 


52  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

tices  a  quite  realistic  readiness  to  change  one 
vocation  for  another,  side  by  side  with  remark- 
able aptitude  for  acquiring  specialistic  skill  and 
many-sidedness  in  necessary  adaptations  to  new 
sets  of  circumstances.  Scientific  pursuits  of  a 
recreative  character  are  rarely  indulged  in  by 
private  persons ;  people  with  "  hobbies  "  may 
be  said  not  to  exist  at  all.  Nor  is  there  much 
room  in  the  native  heart  for  the  sentiment  of 
place.  The  Russian  is  attached  to  his  family 
and  to  his  friends ;  wherever  they  are,  there 
also  are  his  affections.  But  in  the  house,  the 
town,  or  the  government  in  which  he  may 
happen  to  reside,  his  interest  is  conspicuously 
small.  His  domicile  may  be  burned  down  in 
the  course  of  the  year ;  his  town,  —  and  all 
Russian  towns  are  alike  in  this  respect,  —  lacks 
everything  needed  to  make  a  centre  of  popula- 
tion attractive  ;  while  migrant  habits  have  given 
to  the  mere  district  a  conception  as  generically 
wide  as  that  of  the  province  itself.  Between 
the  ardent  patriotism  of  the  Russian  and  the 
not  less  warm  personal  affections  of  his  home 
life  stretches  an  immense  plain  of  colorless  in- 
difference. 

The  political  consequences  of  apolism  have, 
on  the  other  hand,  been  grave  and  far-reaching. 
Nor  will  this  seem  strange,  when  it  is  remem- 
bered at  what  critical  periods  the  interests  of 


APOLISM.  53 

urban  development  have  stood  in  direct  antag- 
onism to  the  arrangements  of  absplute  power. 
In  quite  early  times  the  country  sacrificed  its 
free  republics  and  municipal  institution  to  the 
peculiarities  of  administrative  centralization  ;  at 
later  epochs  one  finds  well-meaning  and  enthu- 
siastic, but  unpractical,  reformers,  conspiring 
against  city  growth  by  their  very  efforts  to  se- 
cure its  promotion.  Fiscal  and  administrative 
necessities  taught  the  wisdom  of  attempts  at 
improvement,  V'  the  imitators  of  the  urban 
institutions  of  the  wesf.  ignored  the  very  first 
conditions  of  successful  tinkering  with  the 
autonomous  organization  of  the  old  Slav  com- 
mune. It  was  comparatively  easy  to  import 
forms  of  urban  government  from  the  west.  To 
erect  a  structure,  or  series  of  structures,  that 
should  strike  by  the  novelty  of  their  outlines 
and  the  complexity  of  their  architecture  was  no 
insuperable  task.  But  to  give  stability  and 
permanence  to  those  structures  was  impossible, 
simply  because  they  lacked  the  needed  founda- 
tion in  the  life,  habits,  and  traditions  of  the 
people. l 

!The  latest  experiment  in  municipal  organization,  that  of  1870, 
is  still  on  its  trial.  The  journal  Dyelo  pointed  out  in  the  month  of 
September,  1883,  that  only  17,751  persons,  out  of  a  population  of 
860,000,  elect  the  252  deputies  for  the  municipal  council  (duma) 
of  the  Russian  capital.  "  We  thus  see,"  it  proceeds,  "  St.  Peters- 
burg's population  reduced  to  a  mere  handful,  and  nearly  a  million 
people  governed  by  a  body  that  could  easily  be  lodged  in  a  sin- 
gle elage  of  one  of  our  grand  hotels." 


54  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

The  gate  of  the  Slav  city,  with  its  rude 
masonry  and  gaudy  paint,  appeared  only  at 
Moscow,  but  it  was  everywhere  symbolized  by 
the  yoke  under  which  the  Russians  passed  to 
the  dregs  of  their  humiliation.  The  despair  of 
political  subjection  menaced  them  from  every 
portal,  and  was  the  promise  of  their  destiny 
in  every  land.  In  the  west  and  south  they 
pledged  their  allegiance  to  alien  kings.  In 
the  east,  we  see  their  individual  liberties,  their 
local  autonomies  and  republican  federations, 
overridden  and  trampled  under  foot  by  the  lust 
for  centralization  and  absolute  power.  Prowess, 
courage,  endurance  —  all  the  qualities  neces- 
sary to  the  successful  pursuit  of  war,  —  these 
the  Slav  never  lacked.  Russian  epic  literature  is 
one  continuous  story  of  campaign  and  conquest, 
of  military  heroes  and  their  martial  exploits. 
From  the  time  of  their  first  attack  on  Constanti- 
nople down  to  the  fall  of  Geok  Tepe\  or  the 
acquisition  of  Merv,  the  Russians  have  never 
been  known  to  show  deficiency  in  boldness  or 
enterprise.  Slav  towns  were  the  real  sources 
of  their  political  weakness.  *  Western  life, 
at  a  very  early  period,  brought  into  existence 
a  class  of  sturdy  burghers,  jealous  watchers 
of  the  encroachments  of  sovereignty,  and  ready 
on  the  smallest  provocation  to  sally  forth  in 
assertion  of  the  rights  of  citizenship.     Such  were 


APOLISM.  55 

the  burghers  of  many  of  the  English  towns ; 
such  were  the  burghers  of  Antwerp ;  such,  in- 
deed, were  the  citizens  of  all  European  towns 
that  had  the  power  of  free  growth,  and  were 
not  cramped  in  their  activities.  It  is  true  that 
at  times  this  burgher  spirit  could  be  humili- 
ated ;  at  times  it  was  even  temporarily  crushed, 
but  it  never  died  out  of  the  hearts  of  the 
urban  populations.  And  it  was  this  spirit,  — 
not  to  mention  the  commoner  English  examples 
of  its  influence,  —  that  in  the  Middle  Ages 
brought  the  free  Italian  cities  into  existence, 
and  forced  from  Barbarossa  the  famous  conces- 
sion of  urban  rights  and  privileges.  It  was 
this  spirit  that  animated  the  successful  clamor 
of  the  French  towns  in  the  days  of  Louis  le 
Gros.  It  was  this  spirit,  in  fine,  that  scattered 
city  charters  all  over  western  Europe,  that  al- 
most everywhere,  winning  urban  privilege  here, 
aiding  municipal  development  there,  materi- 
ally helped  to  humanize  the  relations  between 
the  governing  and  the  governed  classes.  But 
Russian  towns,  once  they  became  entangled  in 
the  web  of  which  the  woof  was  of  Byzantium 
and  the  warp  from  Asia,  had  neither  free  cities, 
urban  privileges,  nor  charters,  f  From  about  the 
middle  of  the  thirteenth  century,  they  existed 
merely  as  taxable  communities,  without  other 
significance  than  that  which  the  fiscal  necessi- 


56  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

ties  of  the  country  dictated.1  In  Russia,  under 
such  circumstances  as  these,  there  could  be  no 
municipal  institutions  resembling  those  of  west- 
ern Europe.  The  burgher  spirit  was  entirely- 
wanting,  and  remains  defective  to  this  day. 

The  distance  between  the  towns  had  its  par- 
allel in  the  distance  between  the  people ;  the 
straggling,  imperfect  character  of  the  former, 
the  migrant  habits  of  the  latter,  rendered  all 
effective  solidarity  for  the  purposes  of  political 
combination  highly  difficult,  if  not  impossible. 
In  a  Slav,  and  not  a  Roman  sense,  the  Russians 
were  doomed  to  be  divided  and  governed.  In 
the  towns  they  suffered  municipal  annihilation, 
yet  had  to  bear  the  burden  of  fiscal  tyranny ; 
in  the  country  at  large,  they  underwent  en- 
slavement, ostensibly  as  cultivators  of  the  glebe, 
but  really  as  convenient  instruments  of  taxa- 
tion. And  in  the  one  case,  as  in  the  other, 
the  very  conditions  of  their  bondage  were  des- 
tined to  continually  renew  in  them  their  old 
passion  for  liberty, —  for  individual  rights,  for 
freedom  of  movement,  and  for  a  popular  auton- 
omous form  of  government. 

1  See  writings  of  Dityatin  on  urban  administration  in  Russia. 


ENVIRONMENT. 


In  its  climactic  life  Russia  presents  as  special- 
ized a  series  of  phenomena  as  it  is  perhaps 
possible  to  imagine.  The  severity  of  its  ex- 
tremes of  heat  and  cold,  the  dryness  of  its 
atmosphere,  the  facilities  which  its  contour 
gives  for  the  diffusion  of  climactic  changes,  the 
freedom  of  its  weather  from  marine  modifica- 
tion, —  all  these  isolate  it  from  the  cou*  '  i#es  of 
western  Europe  as  completely  as  it  is  separated 
from  them  by  the  conditions  of  its  national 
growth.  Its  seasons  present  the  sharpest  con- 
trasts. To  its  brief  summer  of  almost  ^ropical 
heat  is  opposed  a  win*--  .  of  extrao^aary  rigor, 
wherein  the  country  loses  its  rivers  and  much 
of  its  seaboard  for  six  months  out  of  every 
twelve.  Between  the  greatest  heat  and  the 
greatest  cold  of  a  single  year  in  European 
Russia,  it  is  no  uncommon  thing  to  experience 
a  difference  of  seventy  degrees  centigrade.  To 
a  "longest  day"  of  nearly  nineteen  hours  in 
the  capital  is  opposed  in  winter  a  day  in  which 
the  sun  is  scarcely  six  hours  above  the  horizon. 


58  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

Climactic  changes,  moreover,  occur  with 
characteristic  abruptness.  The  summer  ebbs 
out  with  a  movement  rapid  as  that  of  the  re- 
treating tide  along  a  level  shore,  and  almost  ere 
one  has  time  to  say  it  freezes,  the  whole  country- 
is  ice-bound.  A  few  days  is  a  time  sufficiently 
long  to  complete  even  the  most  startling  of 
these  changes.  One  week  rivers  like  the  Neva 
and  Volga  may  be  alive  with  craft,  the  one  gay 
with  pleasure  boats,  the  other  full  of  freight- 
bearing  barges;  the  next  week  they  may  be 
seen  completely  frozen  over.  This  stagnation 
of  rivers  in  Russia  is  all  the  more  striking  be- 
cause of  the  impressiveness  of  its  appeal  to  the 
imagination.  Slav  mythology,  I  think,  fitly  in- 
cludes winter  and  death  in  the  same  personifi- 
cation ;  for  Marana,  the  goddess  of  both,  pre- 
sides over  phenomena  so  suggestive  of  ordinary 
mortality  that,  with  the  dying  of  the  rivers,  it  is 
impossible  not  to  associate  the  dying  of  animals 
and  of  men.  The  sudden  stagnation  of  a  liv- 
ing, flowing  mass ;  the  aspect  of  immense  con- 
gealed blocks  piled  one  upon  another,  or  of 
irregular  masses  protruding  from  the  surface, 
suggesting  forces  that  once  had  free  play,  but 
have  all  at  once  been  stricken  with  paralysis ; 
the  abnormal  silence  of  one's  progress  over  the 
snow-clad  ice  ;  the  gloom  of  the  brief  day  or 
the   long   glimmer   of   the   moonless   night, — 


ENVIRONMENT.  59 

these  not  only  convey  to  the  mind  a  sense  of 
desolation  and  death,  but  color  it  with  a  feeling 
of  almost  personal  bereavement.  In  the  Rus- 
sian, at  any  rate,  these  climactic  changes  find 
a  complete  physiological  response.  His  moods 
are  no  more  equable  than  those  of  the  weather. 
They  often  present  a  series  of  the  most  startling 
contrasts.  The  Russian  individuality,  like  the 
Russian  climate,  has  its  winters  of  gloomy  mel- 
ancholy and  pessimism,  its  springs  of  sudden 
hope,  its  summers  of  hot  feeling  and  passion. 

And  if  winter  is  nowhere  so  desolate  and 
woe-begone  in  its  aspects  as  in  Russia,  nowhere 
else,  I  think,  is  the  idea  of  resurrection  so  com- 
pletely realized,  not  only  in  the  suddenness  of 
the  uprising,  but  in  the  effects  produced  by  the 
returning  warmth.  On  the  darkest,  longest 
night  of  winter,  when  to  the  experience  of  only 
a  single  season  everything  would  seem  hope- 
lessly involved  in  the  grasp  of  cold  and  dark- 
ness, there  is  still  left  a  sign  of  life.  A  low 
note  reaches  the  ear  listening  attentively  near 
the  edge  of  the  frozen  stream.  This  is  the 
swash  of  underflowing  currents ;  or  rather,  can 
we  not  say,  the  musical  resurgam-chant  of  some 
watery  Enceladus  that,  whatever  may  happen  in 
Egypt  or  in  Mexico,  must  inevitably  awake  at 
the  spring?  And  so  nowhere  as  in  Russia  is 
there  the  same  inner   sustenance  in  times  of 


60  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

adversity,  the  same  eagerness  for  renaissance, 
for  re-birth,  the  same  patient  confidence  in  a 
something  better,  a  something  warmer  and 
brighter,  destined  to  arise  out  of  the  darkest 
and  most  desolate  winters  of  the  individual  and 
the  national  life.  How  far  in  other  countries 
the  belief  in  a  future  existence  may  have  been 
promoted  by  these  renewals  of  nature  cannot, 
perhaps,  be  known;  but  in  Russia  there  are 
many  evidences  of  the  influence  and  of  the 
strength  of  its  appeal  to  the  imagination. 
Without  embodying  any  distinct  conception  of 
a  future  life,  the  old  Slav  faith  regarded  the 
souls  of  the  dead  as  co-participants  with  the 
living  in  the  vicissitudes  of  the  seasons.  For 
the  departed,  winter  was  considered  a  time  of 
night ;  but  as  soon  as  spring  returned,  the  soul 
rose  to  new  life  and  enjoyment.  The  dead 
ascended  from  their  graves  at  the  first  prazdnik, 
or  fete  day,  of  the  newly-born  sun ;  and  to  this 
hour  there  is  a  festival,  coincident  with  that 
just  named  in  point  of  time,  which  the  litur- 
gical language  of  the  Greek  Church  associates 
with  the  stranstvovaniya  dukhov,  or  "  journey- 
ing of  souls."  The  russalki,  or  so-called  water- 
nymphs  of  Slav  mythology,  —  those  enchanting 
figures  that  still  haunt  the  realm  of  poesy  and 
picture  in  Russia,  —  are  known  to  be  nothing 
more,  in  a  philological  sense,  than  the  spirits  of 


ENVIRONMENT.  61 

human  beings  that  have  arisen  from  the  grave 
to  enjoy  the  re-birth  at  nature's  annual  renais- 
sance. l  Associating  them  with  rivers  in  the 
conception  of  a  common  re-awakening,  Slav 
mythology  seems  to  have  put  forth  its  happiest 
effort  of  imagination. 

Sun  worship,  too,  lingers  amongst  the  Rus- 
sians in  interesting  ways.  Even  after  Christi- 
anity had  fairly  established  itself  in  the  land, 
the  solar  myths  of  the  old  Slav  nature-worship 
continued  to  retain  their  hold  upon  the  popular 
mind.  The  same  Vladimir  who  caused  the 
Pagan  thunder  god  to  be  flogged  and  thrown 
into  the  Dnieper  came  to  rank  amongst  the 
people  as  a  sort  of  solar  divinity.  At  this  day 
the  Russian  woman  can  say  to  her  lover  no 
words  more  tender,  more  natural,  or  more  full 
of  worship  and  admiration,  than  those  in  which 
she  calls  him  her  hrdsnoye  sdlnyshko,  her 
"beautiful  sun."  It  was,  of  course,  inevitable 
that  especial  attention  should  be  paid  to  solar 
functions  in  a  country  like  Russia.  The  long 
rigorous  winter,  the  sudden  metamorphosis  of 
spring,  give  an  immense  significance  to  the  pe- 
riods of  increasing  warmth.  Solar  beneficence 
is  often  acknowledged  in  Russian  poetry.  At 
times  one  finds  the  acknowledgment  in  the  form 

1  See  Soloviev's  Istoriya  Rossii  s  drevnyeishnikh  Vremen. 


62  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

of  personification  and  apostrophe.  Some  lines 
relating  to  events  of  the  seventeenth  century 
run,  "Rise,  O  red  sun,  and  give  us  warmth! 
We  are  no  robbers  ;  we  are  the  soldiers  of 
St^nka  R&zin."  Whoever  has  been  abroad  in 
the  Russian  plain  in  the  depth  of  winter,  ex- 
posed to  an  atmosphere  thirty1  degrees  below 
freezing  point,  —  an  atmosphere  which  seems  to 
penetrate  through  the  thickest  wrappings,  and 
turns  water  to  ice  ere  it  can  be  thrown  to  the 
ground,  —  will  not  wonder  at  the  readiness 
with  which  the  Russians  see  in  the  sun  all  that 
is  glorious,  life-sustaining,  and  bountiful.  To 
the  Slav  winter  is  a  despotism,  and  he  witnesses 
its  overthrow  with  a  joy  scarcely  less  great  than 
that  of  a  people  welcoming  the  dawn  of  their 
freedom.  Such,  at  any  rate,  is  the  testimony  of 
church  festival  and  folklore,  of  tradition  and 
song. 

The  forest  growths  of  Russia,  at  one  time 
overrunning  almost  all  the  central  and  northern 
territories,  must  have  contributed  powerfully  to 
the  polytheistic  faiths  of  the  early  Slavs.  The 
rushing  of  the  wind  amongst  the  trees,  the  play 
of  sunlight  on  trembling  leaves,  the  swaying 
and  groaning  of  great  trunks,  the  storm  burst- 
ing over  them  with  its  lightning  flash,  —  every 
mood   of   the   forest,  from  its  softest  whisper 

1  Reaumur. 


ENVIRONMENT.  63 

to  its  loudest  roar,  its  thousand  variations  of 
light  and  -shade,  silence  and  sound,  —  all  these 
taught  the  omnipresence  of  deity,1  and  im- 
planted it  so  deeply  in  the  Slav  nature  that  the 
Russians  believe  in  their  forest  spirits  to  this 
day.  True  it  is  that  the  colonization  of  the 
country,  involving  the  disappearance  of  an  im- 
mense number  of  trees,  could  not  fail  to  favor 
the  monotheistic  views  of  the  Christian  relig- 
ion; yet  the  homeless  genii  of  the  woods,  de- 
prived of  their  natural  habitat,  continued  to 
live  on  in  the  imagination  that  gave  them  birth. 
By  atmospheric  conditions  alone  the  Russians 
were  marked  out  for  tendencies  towards  the 
superstitious  in  religion.  Subject  to  a  conti- 
nental climate,  living  in  a  state  of  peculiar 
nearness  to  natural  forces,  they  were  highly 
sensitive  to  phenomena  not  visibly  the  result 
of  human  agency.  These  atmospheric  condi- 
tions of  Russian  development  were,  in  fact, 
analogous  in  several  respects  to  those  which, 
in  quite  modern  times,  have  favored  curious 
superstitions  of  mountainous  territories,  to  be 
found,  for  example,  in  Switzerland,  the  High- 
lands of  Scotland,  and  the  hills  of  Derbyshire. 

1  The  power  of  forests  to  suggest  the  supernatural  seems  proof 
against  all  processes  of  civilization.  Mr.  Emerson  mentions  the 
case  of  a  lady  for  whom  forests  always  appeared  to  wait,  —  that 
is  to  say,  to  suspend  a  certain  mysterious  life  until  after  the  pas- 
sage of  the  intruder. 


64  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

Even  in  New  England,  with  its  severe  and 
variable  climate,  religion  has  a  highly  spiritual 
character,  a  strong  super-sensual  element,  be- 
traying the  influence  of  conditions  that  do  not 
exist,  or  that  exist  to  a  much  less  degree,  in  the 
mother  country.  In  another  way,  too,  does  hill 
life  help  the  conservation  of  superstitious  ter- 
rors. It  separates  people  instead  of  bringing 
them  together.  It  weakens  a  community's 
sense  of  numbers,  its  feeling  of  nearness,  its 
consciousness  of  solidarity  and  strength.  This 
is,  no  doubt,  why  civilization  made  so  much  and 
such  rapid  progress  in  Europe,  which  of  all  the 
quarters  of  the  world  has  the  lowest  mean  alti- 
tude. It  is  true  that  Russia  had  no  mountains, 
but  her  people  were  separated  very  effectively 
by  geographical,  ethnic  and  political  causes. 
And  Russian  civilization  came  so  late  that  be- 
fore the  eighteenth  century  the  country  had  no 
literature  at  all  worthy  of  the  name.1 

The  political  effects  of  climate  upon  Russian 
development  must  have  been  considerable.  In 
some  quarters  it  has  been  suggested  that  ex- 
treme cold  prepared  the  Slavs  for  the  Mongol 
yoke  and  the  autocracy  which  came  after  it.2 
It  is  just  as  probable  that  extreme  heat,  by 
making  people  indolent,  directly  favors  abso- 

1  Russia's  first  poet  was  Lomonosov,  born  1711 ;  died  1760. 

2  M.  A.  Leroy  Beaulieu. 


ENVIRONMENT.  65 

lute  government  and  the  usurpation  of  power, 
—  a  relation  of  cause  to  effect  often  illustrated 
in  the  history  of  eastern  and  southern  peoples. 
If  climate  be  recognized  as  one  of  the  factors 
of  national  growth,  it  will  be  found  that  far 
more  people  have  been  enslaved  or  deprived  of 
their  liberties  through  the  influence  of  extreme 
heat  than  owing  to  that  of  excessive  cold.  A 
moderate  degree  of  cold  has  always  been  favor- 
able rather  than  injurious  to  civilization.  It 
braces  the  physical  system,  and  permits  a  high 
degree  of  mental  activity.  I  must,  therefore, 
describe  the  Russian  winter  as  having  been  the 
enemy  rather  than  the  friend  of  Mongolism  in 
all  its  forms.  Cold  has  a  special  as  well  as 
a  general  way  of  aiding  a  nation's  intellectual 
growth ;  it  induces  reflective  habits ;  it  favors 
the  tendency  of  a  monotonous  landscape  to 
throw  the  mind  back  upon  itself.  Under  the 
influence  of  cold,  faculties  deprived  of  exterior 
sources  of  interest,  unable  to  assimilate  and 
convert  into  ideas  impressions  not  satisfactory 
to  the  mind,  all  the  more  eagerly  seek  inte- 
rior or  reflective  occupation.  Hence,  the  Rus- 
sian intellect  is  subjective  rather  than  objective, 
reflective  rather  than  observational,  analytic 
rather  than  descriptive.  While  they  have  done 
much  as  a  race  for  science,  I  have  not  been  able 
to  find  Russians  remarkable  for  proficiency  in 


66  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

anything  that  exacts  highly-developed  descrip- 
tive powers,  or  close  attention  to  the  minute 
in  nature.  A  west  European  novelist  having 
domiciliary  business  with  one  of  his  characters 
will  often  describe  a  whole  house,  from  ground 
floor  to  ceiling,  not  omitting  the  minutest  or 
the  most  multipedalian  detail.  Russian  writers 
may  picture,  but  they  rarely  describe.  Pisem- 
sky  wrote  whole  novels  without  a  line  of  de- 
scription. Even  in  the  descriptions  of  Gogol, 
who  wrote  in  Great  Russian,  but  was  a  Little 
Russian  at  heart,  a  strong  subjective  element 
may  be  detected.  Some  of  the  most  striking 
of  Turgeniev's  books  contain  very  few  descrip- 
tive passages.  The  descriptions  of  recent  "  peas- 
ant literature  "  in  Russia  are  the  result  of  bor- 
rowed habit,  or  of  the  ethical  purposes  of  certain 
modern  schools.  Among  Russian  translators 
it  is  very  common  to  shorten  or  wholly  omit 
descriptive  passages  from  west  European  nov- 
els. During  the  recent  war  between  Russia 
and  Turkey  quite  a  sensation  was  created  in 
the  former  country  by  the  publication  of  long 
descriptive  reports  translated  from  the  London 
44  Daily  News." 

The  Russians  excel,  on  the  other  hand,  in 
everything  that  exacts  wide  views,  broad  gener- 
alizations. Their  talent  for  philosophical  spec- 
ulation  is,   considering  all   the   circumstances 


ENVIRONMENT.  67 

of  the  case,  remarkably  large.  It  seems  to 
manifest  itself  in  every  department  of  intel- 
lectual activity.  Russian  poetry  revealed  the 
reflective  tendency  in  the  earliest  youth  of  Rus- 
sian literature.  Lomonosov,  whom  Aksakov, 
the  Slavophil  writer  and  critic,  describes  as 
'4  the  one  true  source  of  all  the  Russians  have 
accomplished,  are  accomplishing,  or  shall  ac- 
complish in  the  field  of  literary  activity,"  was 
as  much  philosopher  as  poet..  It  was  he  who 
delivered  a  celebrated  discourse  on  the  origin 
of  light,  and  out  of  such  material  as  "  the  uses 
of  glass  "  produced  the  first,  and,  as  is  frequently 
alleged,  the  best,  didactic  poem  in  the  Russian 
language.  It  was  Lomonosov  who,  long  before 
the  breaking  out  of  the  Kulturhampf  between 
science  and  theology  in  Western  Europe,  pro- 
claimed that  "  science  and  faith  are  sisters,  the 
offspring  of  one  mighty  parent ;  nor  can  there 
ever  arise  real  dissension  between  the  two."  It 
was  Lomonosov  who  said  that  "  the  man  who 
thinks  he  can  learn  astronomy  or  chemistry  from 
his  psalter  is  no  more  a  true  theologian  than  he 
is  a  true  philosopher  who  imagines  that  with  a 
mathematical  line  he  can  measure  the  divine 
will."  Russian  art,  too,  is  a  Janus  with  two 
faces,  one  of  them  imitative  in  its  aspirations, 
the  other  "  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of 
thought."    Russian  pictures  have  a  peculiar  sug- 


68  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLl/ 

gestiveness  apart  from  the  fidelity  of  their  rep- 
resentations. This  tendency  seems  to  reach 
its  fullest  and  most  successful  expression  in 
Vereshchagin,  whose  paintings  are  genuine  phi- 
losophies, whose  appeal  is  to  the  reflective,  and 
through  them  to  the  emotional  faculties.1  States- 
manship, diplomacy,  and  officialism  also  have 
their  reflective  side  in  Russia.  Exceedingly 
abstract  philosophical  propositions  occasionally 
find  their  way  into  state  papers  and  public  re- 
ports. In  the  schools  and  educational  establish- 
ments —  not  only  in  professors'  lectures,  but  in 
the  essays  of  pupils  —  the  same  tendency  is  dis- 
played of  the  Russian  mind  to  occupy  itself 
more  with  categories  than  with  single  facts, 
more  with  generalizations  than  with  details, 
more  with  principles  than  with  things.2 

Thus  far  I  have  spoken  only  of  climactic  en- 
vironment. There  still  remain  for  considera- 
tion the  material  surroundings  of  Russian  life 
—  the  character  of  its  objective  world  as  cog- 
nized, to  use  a  philosophical  expression,  through 
the  organs  of  vision.     The  monotonousness  of 

1  I  refer  mainly,  of  course,  to  Vereshchagin' s  celebrated  illus- 
trations of  the  Russo-Turkish  War,  such  as  Our  Wounded,  After 
the  Attack,  Prisoners,  All  Well  in  the  Shipka  Pass,  etc. 

2  I  remember  once  applying  to  a  Russian  library  official  for  the 
"main  facts  in  the  life  and  literary  activity  of  Pissarev."  The  re- 
sult was  a  manuscript  discussing  the  "significance  **  of  Pissarev  as 
the  founder  of  the  "art  school,"  and  his  relation  to  Bielinsky, 
founder  of  the  "aesthetic  school." 


ENVIRONMENT.  69 

the  Russian  landscape  is  well  known.  It  is 
true  that,  traveling  in  bright  weather  through 
some  parts  of  the  country,  one  has  glimpses  of 
villages  with  their  gold-capped  churches,  or  of 
water-courses  glittering  in  the  sunlight,  or  of  the 
flash  of  scythes  in  distant  harvest  fields.  Mo- 
ments like  these  are  like  the  rare  smile  of  the 
sickly  invalid  rather  than  the  perpetual  cheer- 
fulness of  robust  health.  There  is  no  real  pic- 
turesqueness  in  Russian  scenery.  Even  the 
waving  steppes,  luxuriant  of  life  as  they  are  and 
full  of  flowers,  have  something  mournful  and 
pathetic  about  them  that  may  be  felt,  but  can 
never  be  adequately  expressed.  Russians  love 
the  scenery  of  their  native  land  with  the  same 
kind  of  affection  as  that  which  parents  lavish 
upon  a  consumptive  child ;  and  if  these  fertile 
steppes  seem  to  show  more  color  than  may  be 
found  in  other  parts  of  Russia,  it  is  only  because 
they  are  for  moments  aglow  with  the  hectic 
flush,  the  fever  light  of  the  Russian  life  and 
environment.  Much  darker  is  the  picture  pre- 
sented by  the  woodlands  ;  these  combine  the 
wild  disorder  and  luxuriance  of  Russian  vegeta- 
tion in  all  its  arboreal  forms.  Immense  tracts 
of  mere  brushwood  sometimes  stretch  to  the 
horizon,  or  the  prospect  is  darkened  by  sweeps 
of  moorland  equally  vast,  without  shrub,  or  bush, 
or  tree.   Elsewhere,  broad,  ochre- tinted  patches 


70  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

mark  where  the  communal  land  is  under  culti- 
vation. But  the  long,  wide  plains  of  a  mourn- 
ful, deadened  green  exert  a  depressing  influence 
upon  the  mind,  and  the  eye  wanders  willingly 
for  relief  to  the  far-off  march  of  some  forest 
tract  closing  in  the  monotony  with  a  band  of 
sombre  brown. 

Portions  of  European  Russia  are  wild  and 
desolate  in  the  extreme.  Along  the  lower 
Volga  one  may  journey  for  fifteen  miles  with- 
out seeing  a  single  habitation.  The  "  stations  " 
are  merely  oases  of  wood  lost  in  vast  stretches 
of  steppeland  void  of  vegetation.  On  each  side 
the  country  extends  bare  and  level  as  far  as  the 
horizon,  and  if  snow  enters  the  prospect,  as  it 
did  for  me,  the  dull,  blinding  monotony  of  the 
spectacle  becomes  almost  unbearable. 

The  same  beggarliness  and  impoverishment 
characterize  the  exterior  aspects  of  village  life 
in  the  provinces.  The  impression  they  make 
is  well  suggested  by  Pushkin's  satirical  picture  : 

"  Admire  the  view  before  us  —  that  wretched  row  of  huts ; 
Behind  them  a  long  and  leyel  descent  of  black  land, 
Above  them  a  thick  bank  of  grayish  clouds. 
Where  are  the  gay  fields  ?    Where  the  shady  woods  ? 
Where  the  river  ?    In  the  yard  there,  near  the  fence, 
Shoot  up  two  miserable  trees  to  glad  the  eye  — 
Just  two  aud  no  more;  and  of  them  one  has  been 
Shorn  by  autumn  rains  of  every  beauty; 
While  the  sparse  leaves  on  the  other  are  withered  and  yellow, 
Awaiting  the  first  breeze  to  fall  and  putrefy 
The  sluggish  pond  below." 


ENVIRONMENT.  71 

And  if  Russian  out-door  life  in  the  country  has 
no  hedge-rows  or  flower  gardens  to  make  it  at- 
tractive, the  Russian  town  is  equally  deficient 
in  picturesqueness.  If,  on  the  one  hand,  there 
are  no  ivy-clad  ruins  to  meet  the  eye  with  their 
pleasant  suggestions,  there  is,  on  the  other,  a 
marked  absence  of  beauty  in  all  the  forms  of 
architectural  design.  If  it  were  to  be  suddenly 
discovered  that  the  cathedral  at  Cologne  were 
a  mere  piece  of  elaborate  wood-carving,  the 
impression  that  splendid  structure  now  makes 
upon  admirers  would  be  felt  no  more ;  and  so 
the  most  fancifully  shaped  domicile  of  urban 
Russia  is  at  best  but  a  structure  of  wood.  Most 
of  these  houses  are  rude  rather  than  ornamental 
in  their  outlines ;  to  the  eye  of  the  traveler 
they  are  a  source  of  continual  weariness.  Dirty 
streets,  carts  mud-colored  as  the  domiciles  them- 
selves, the  soiled  and  torn  habits  of  migrant  or 
beggar  peasants,  the  continual  cloud  of  dust 
raised  in  warm  weather  by  the  wind,  —  all  these 
intensify  the  depressing  influences  of  the  Rus- 
sian environment,  giving  it  a  sameness  that 
seems  to  pervade  everything,  animate  and  in- 
animate. 

The  exceptions  do  little  more  than  prove  the 
rule.  I  am  bound  to  admit  that  from  the  high 
tower  of  Ivan  Veliky,  right  in  the  thick  of  the 
churches  and  palaces  of  the  Kreml,  the  view  to 


72  Ti7£  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

be  had  of  Moscow  is  striking.  The  eye  rests, 
or  rather  wanders,  over  a  vast  panorama  of 
house-tops  painted  red  and  green ;  here  and 
there  dazzling  gilded  cupolas  shine  in  the  sun. 
But  this  kind  of  picturesqueness  is  rather  the 
rash  extreme  of  tastes  fed  perpetually  on  the 
monotonous  than  the  calmly  studied  ►  contri- 
vance of  a  people  born  into  an  environment  of 
cheerful  coloring  and  contour.  Taking  this 
view  of  the  matter  one  may  see  in  the  (Russian 
peasant's  liking  for  a  red  shirt  the  same  search 
for  contrast  as  that  which,  in  the  villages,  some- 
times leads  a  man  to  paint  his  house  in  glaring 
colors,  or  in  the  cities  impels  him  to  provide 
his  shop  with  a  ludicrously  gaudy  signboard.1 

Pretty  women,  travelers  often  say,  are  scarce 
in  Russia.  This  is  only  another  way  of  stating 
the  extent  to  which  Russian  women  have  suf- 
fered from  the  imbruting  labor  of  the  fields, 
from-  the  long  confinement  of  the  terem,  from 
the  domestic  slavery  of  the  wife,  from  the  late 
and  only  partial  advent  of  modern  comforts, 
luxuries,  and  refinements  to  the  Russian  home ; 
yet  environment  has  also,  done  its  part  in  help- 
ing to  make  femm.-o  beauty  somewhat  scarce 
in  Russia.  For  'centuries .  the  -  i-ace  has  been 
looking  out  over  wide,  formless  plains.  Nature* 
gave  it  no  ideals  of  beauty,  nor,  until  a  period 

1  A  common  habit  in  St.  Petersburg. 


^       OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 


ENVIRONMENT.  73 


comparatively  recent,  did  art.  Its  efforts  at 
ornamentation  long  linked  it  with  the'  gaudy- 
exaggerations  of  barbarism.  And  to  this  day 
its  church  pictures  and  icons*  are  mere  repre- 
sentations of  sallow-faced,  melancholy-visaged- 
saints  wasted  by  persistent  mortification  of  the 
flesh.  .        .    \,' 

I  speak  thus  with  reference  to  the  people     ;m 
a§  a  whole.     Peasants  are  peasant-like ,;  and  in"   \ 
ap -empire  o£  them  it  would.be  too  much  to 
look  for  a  beauty  at  every  turn.     Of  the  men  I     - 
can  only  say  that  in  countenance  and  physique 
their  superiority  over  the  English  and  west  Eu- 
ropean Hodge  is  indisputable.     Some  of  these.; 
inland  Slavs,  with  their  regular  features   and 
flowing  beards,  would  tempt  many  a  painter  in 
Paris  or  Rome  from  his  artisan  model.     When 
traveling   through   the  Tambov  government  I 
saw   many   really   beautiful    "  Christ    heads " 
amongst  the  peasants.     The  Russian;  country   > 
woman,'  on  the  other  hand,  is  generally  ", plain  " 
of  feature,  yet  not  nearly  so  wanting  in  interest 
as  it  has  been  the  habit  of  foreign  prejudice  to 
represent.     Blooming  cheeks  are  impossible  in 
a  dry  atmosphere  like  that  of  Russia.     En  re-    ' 
vanehe,  the  Slav  woman  displays  two  rows  of 
white  teeth  that  would  almost  make  a  west 
European  rival   die  of   jealousy.      She  is  not, 
cramped  fcy  her  dress,  and  has  a  natural'  dignity 


74  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

and  grace  of ,  movement  that  might  be  envied, 
yet  not  easily  imitated  elsewhere.  Nekrassov 
■writes :  — 

"In  many  a  Russian  village  we  may  find  such  women, 
With  quiet  earnestness  of  face, 
With  the  grace  of  strength  in  every  movement 
As  they  go  by  with  regal  gait  and  queenly  mien.". 

Amongst  *theVeciutfate4  classes  of  the  towns, 
moreover,  \the  Russian:  woman'  is  not  less  fre- 
quently pretty  and  much  oftener  attractive,  than 
is  the  woman  of  the  west.  *  • 

But  there  was  another  tendency,  to  the  form- 
ing of  which  environment  must  have  made  large 
contributions.  Missing  color,  variety,  perfection 
of  form,  beauty  of  feature,  in  his  own  surround- 
ings, the  Russian  all  the  more  readily  went 
elsewhere  in  search  of  the  picturesque.  The 
very  custom  of  living  in  houses  seems  to  have 
been  suggested  to  the  Slavs  by  the  experiences 
and  sight-seeing  of  their  travelers  in  foreign 
countries.  And  when  the  habit  of  going  abroad 
became  established  amongst  certain  classes  of 
the  people,  traveled  Russia  would  not  fail  to 
grow  somewhat  tired  of  its  environment,  or  at 
least  desirous  of  importing  into  its  surroundings 
—  intellectual  as  well  as  material  —  certain  in- 
fluences of  modification.  But  as  only  a  favored 
few  could  go  abroad,  this  tendency  would  take  a 
passive  form  amongst  the  masses,   and  hence 


ENVIRONMENT.  75 

would  develop  itself  that  taste  ioi  the  foreign 
which  found  its  fullest  expression  in  Peter  and 
is  at  this  day  one  of  the  most  striking  of  all  the 
characteristics  of  the  Russian  Slavs.  Only  when 
it  threatened  political  injury  or  social  grievance 
did  the  outlandish  fall  into  disrepute ;  for  the 
people  came  at  last  to  draw  a  marked  distinction 
between  acts  of  predilection  like  -that  which  im- 
ported autocracy  from  Byzantium  and  those 
that  merely  gave  ah  Italian  architect  to  the  Vas- 
sily-Blagennoy  Church,  or  filled  the  courts  of 
Tsars  and  Tsarftsas-with  adventurers  of  Dutch, 
German,  and  French  nationality. 


OLD   RUSSIAN  LIFE. 


Having  thus  glanced  at  the  more  important 
of  the  permanent  influences  that  have  directed 
the  course  of  Russian  development,  —  notably 
those  of  habit  and  environment,  —  we  may 
now  consider  the  political  and  religious  causes 
which  at  a  very  early  period  completely  re- 
shaped the  destinies  of  the  Russian  people.  Of 
all  the  influences  that  helped  to  mould  the  na- 
tional development,  by  far  the  most  significant 
and  far-reaching  in  their  consequences  were  the 
changes  by  which,  on  the  one  hand,  Russia  ac- 
cepted the  religion  of  the  Greek  Church  and 
on  the  other  bowed  her  neck  to  Mongol  rule 
during  nearly  two  centuries  of  enslavement  and 
humiliation.  What  the  nation  lost  and  what  it 
gained  from  these  foreign  systems  of  worship 
and  politics  will  be  best  seen  by  comparing  the 
early  Russia  of  pagan  faith  with  the  middle 
Russia,  upon  which  the  Tatar  oppressors,  at 
last  ejected  from  Slav  soil,  had  left  the  indelible 
marks  of  their  influence.  And  here  the  ques- 
tion to  be  answered  is  not  so  much  whether 


OLD  RUSSIAN  LIFE.  77 

the  changes  wrought  were  politically  expedient 
or  even  inevitable,  or  on  the  whole  a  good  com- 
promise between  the  evils  and  advantages  pre- 
sent alike  in  two  systems,  but  whether  they 
were  calculated  to  suit  the  habits  and  traditions 
of  the  people,  whether  they  caused  inroads  into 
customs  and  liberties  deep-rooted  in  the  national 
genius ;  whether  they  made  life  freer,  happier, 
and  more  comfortable  for  the  Russian  Slav,  or 
whether  they  were  destined  to  plant  in  the 
racial  and  individual  consciousness  the  seeds  of 
an  eternal  discontent.  For  the  purposes  of  such 
an  inquiry  I  propose  to  divide  Russian  history 
into  three  great  natural  periods.  The  first  of 
them  terminates  with  the  forcible  conversion  of 
the  Russians  to  the  Greek  faith  (972-1015)  ; 
the  second  includes  the  whole  formative  period 
of  Byzantine  and  Tatar  influence  up  to  the 
beginning  of  Peter's  reign  ;  in  the  third  may  be 
included  Russian  development  from  the  early 
years  of  the  eighteenth  century  down  to  our  own 
times.  We  shall  thus  see  the  purely  Slav  pe- 
riod of  Russian  history,  the  national  life  as  it 
was  moulded  by  Greek  and  Mongol  influences, 
and  the  Russia  of  modern  times,  Europeanized 
in  detail,  yet  left  as  Asian  in  structure  as  when 
it  fell  to  the  grand  princes  of  Moscow  from  the 
hands  of  the  Mongol  Khans. 

In  the  domain  of  religion  the  early  Russians 


78  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

must  have  suffered  all  the  disadvantages  which, 
in  modern  times,  are  associated  with  a  "  pagan  " 
faith.  Without  any  system  of  rewards  and  pun- 
ishments, no  prospect  of  comfort  in  the  next 
world  tempted  them  to  well-doing  in  this.  But 
there  was  one  idea  which  lay  deep  in  the  imagi- 
nation of  the  Slav,  and  which  is  still  there  at 
this  day  despite  all  the  efforts  of  Christianity  to 
uproot  it.  The  early  Russians,  in  place  of  the 
modern  conception  of  a  future  life,  not  only  be- 
lieved in  the  continued  existence  of  the  souls  of 
men  after  death,  but  held  it  possible  to  have  in- 
tercourse with  them.  To  the  existence  of  this 
faith  the  old  songs  and  burial  lamentations  of 
the  north  of  Russia  bear  abundant  testimony. 
"  The  bright  red  sun,"  1  runs  one  of  them,  "has 
hidden  itself  behind  high  mountains  and  wintry 
clouds ;  it  leaves  me,  poor  wretch  that  I  am, 
alone  with  my  children."  But  after  the  death 
of  a  husband,  it  was  the  custom  for  the  widow 
to  throw  herself  upon  his  grave.2  There,  mourn- 
ing, she  confesses  she  has  forgotten  to  ask  where 
she  must  await  her  spouse.  If  he  will  return 
to  her,  let  him  say  whether  he  will  come  at  mid- 
night, in  the  clear  moonlight,  or  at  noon  when 
the  sun  is  shining,  or  in  the  early  morning,  or 
late  at  night.     If  he  will  come  at  night  she  will 

1  That  is,  the  departed,  the  deceased. 

2  See  Prichitanya  Syevernavo  Kraya,   by  E.  B.  Barsovym. 
Moscow,  1872. 


OLD  RUSSIAN  LIFE.  79 

have  everything  ready  for  his  visit ;  she  will 
put  her  children  to  sleep  and  will  sit  beside  the 
window  waiting  for  him.  "  Whether  thou  com- 
est  as  a  gray  hare  out  of  the  bush  or  as  an  erme- 
lin  from  behind  the  stone,  I  shall  not  be  afraid. 
I  shall  receive  thee.  Come  in  the  old  way,  as 
was  thy  wont.  Be  here  again  the  father  of  the 
household  and  the  chief."  Sometimes  a  small 
house  was  built  over  the  grave  in  the  belief 
that  the  deceased  would  return  and  inhabit  it. 
At  the  dinner  following  the  interment  a  vacant 
chair  was  left  for  the  departed,  and  on  the  table 
before  it  the  guests  spilled  food.  Even  after 
the  introduction  of  the  Christian  worship  it 
was  long  a  habit  for  the  relatives  to  invite  the 
priest  to  the  house  on  the  fortieth  day  after  the 
burial,  it  being  supposed  that  the  dead  member 
of  the  family  would  accompany  him.  Occa- 
sionally the  priest  was  induced  to  pass  a  night 
in  the  domicile  ;  in  which  case  there  was  added 
to  the  furniture  of  his  sleeping  room  a  spare 
bed,  wherein,  it  was  believed,  the  deceased 
would  also  spend  several  hours  in  slumber.  The 
old  Russians  had  a  habit  of  visiting  their  dead 
in  the  churchyard,  whence  the  word  for  burial 
ground,  pogosta,  derived  from  gost,  or  guest, 
host.  Even  at  the  present  day,  on  the  occasion 
of  certain  festivals,  crowds  flock  to  churchyards 
and  cemeteries,  carrying  with  them  drinks  and 


80  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

food  of  various  kinds,  to  be  eaten  from  the 
gravestones,  which  are  used  as  tables.  Feasting 
in  this  way,  the  people  believe  that  they  are 
brought  into  close  communion  with  the  dead. 
Hence,  on  the  whole,  paganism  was  not  with- 
out a  certain  consolation.  But  the  great  merit 
of  the  old  Slav  faith  in  the  eyes  of  Russians  was 
of  a  negative  rather  than  of  a  positive  character. 
It  brought  no  narrow  asceticism  or  ecclesiasti- 
cal prohibition  to  cramp  the  heart  and  chill 
the  soul,  to  brand  with  criminality  the  most 
harmless  pleasures,  and  in  a  panic  fear,  born 
of  dogma  and  narrowness,  to  make  delight  in 
existence  for  its  own  sake  seem  a  crime  rather 
than  a  blessing.  Nor  did  it  aid  in  ruining  the 
free  republics,  in  destroying  the  liberties  of  the 
people,  in  weakening  the  sense  of  individual 
freedom,  in  promoting  the  aims  of  autocratic 
power. 

The  manners  of  the  early  Russians  have  not 
always  been  depicted  in  the  most  favorable 
light.  Yet  it  is  noteworthy  that  disparaging 
accounts  of  them  had  their  origin  in  a  source 
not  unlikely  to  be  influenced  by  prejudice.  The 
monk  Nestor  wrote  as  a  zealous  Christian  would 
naturally  write  of  pagans.  His  testimony  lacks 
corroboration  in  some  essential  particulars  ;  even 
if  accepted  implicitly  it  does  not  show  that  the 
Russians  were  in  a  condition  at  all  worse  than 


OLD  RUSSIAN  LIFE.  81 

that  of  other  tribes  and  races  from  whose  hori- 
zon the  glimmerings  of  civilization  were  yet  far 
off.  Yet  even  Nestor  makes  an  exception  in 
favor  of  the  Polyans,1  while  amongst  the  Slav- 
yans 1  customs  prevailed  which  distance,  in  their 
generosity  and  philanthropic  feeling,  the  most 
altruistic  inspirations  of  the  Christian  faith. 
To  these  untutored  children  of  the  plain  and 
the  forest  the  traveler  or  wanderer  was  a  being 
of  peculiar  sanctity  —  a  holy  man  ^worthy  to  be 
worshiped.  They  received  him  with  caresses, 
and  took  pride  in  lodging  him  and  supplying 
his  needs  with  the  best  of  that  which  they  had. 
Neglect  to  protect  him  from  evil  and  misfortune 
of  all  kinds  was  regarded  as  a  breach  of  the 
rude  social  order  that  prevailed  in  those  early 
times ;  so  important,  in  fact,  was  this  duty  of 
hospitality  that,  to  discharge  it,  even  theft  was 
considered  lawful.  That  is  to  say,  if  a  man 
had  no  means  of  entertaining  a  guest,  he  was 
entitled  to  obtain  them  from  his  richer  neighbor. 
The  Slavyan  often  left  his  door  open,  and  food 
spread  ready  in  the  domicile,  in  order  that 
the  strannik,  or  traveler,  might  enter  freely  and 
eat.2 

Now,  if  it  be  true,  as  we  are  constantly  told, 
that  altruism  is  but  a  higher  form  of  egotism,  it 
is  quite  possible  that  some  utilitarian  motives 

1  Tribes  of  the  early  Slavs.  *  See  Karamzin. 

6 


82  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

lay  at  the  bottom  of  these  hospitable  customs 
of  the  early  Slavs.  A  religious  superstition  — 
some  vaguely  felt  reflex  of  the  old  belief  that 
deities  walked  the  earth  at  times  in  the  garb  of 
beggars  and  of  travelers  —  may  have  invested 
the  wanderer  with  that  sanctity  which  the  early 
Russian  attached  to  his  person  and  condition. 
Even  so  late  as  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth 
century  we  find  a  writer  of  didactic  literature, 
one  Ivan  Possoshkov,  teaching  that  beggars  are 
the  representatives  of  God,  and  that  unless  they 
are  treated  well  God  will  be  angry.1  On  the 
'other  hand,  a  traveler  had  seen  much,  and  was 
likely  to  bring  with  him  a  fund  of  interesting  in- 
formation concerning  distant  cities,  or  even  for- 
eign countries.  The  desire  of  being  well  spoken 
of  was  also  a  possible  motive  for  the  kindly 
treatment  of  strangers.  In  Vladimir's  advice  to 
his  sons,  —  a  twelfth  century  document,  —  that 
pence's  children  were  charged  to  receive  stran- 
gers hospitably,  "  because,"  runs  the  text,  "  they 
have  it  in  their  power  to  give  you  a  good  or  a 
bad  reputation."  Admitting  the  plausibleness 
of  all  these  considerations,  there  still  remains 
in  the  hospitality  of  the  early  Russians  an  altru- 
istic, a  philanthropic  element  that  cannot  be 
explained  by  referring   it  to  gross   egotistical 

1  Compare  Nausicaa's  saying  in  the  Odyssey,  "Strangers  and 
the  poor  are  the  messengers  of  the  gods." 


OLD  RUSSIAN  LIFE.  83 

motives.  This  is  shown  in  the  characteristics 
of  the  old  racial  virtue  as  it  survives  in  Russia 
to  this  day.  No  treatment  of  the  modern 
8trannik  surpasses  in  kindliness  and  disinterest- 
edness that  which  is  lavished  upon  the  traveler 
constrained  to  throw  himself  upon  the  hospi- 
tality of  the  eastern  Slav.  I  have  received  at- 
tentions from  wandering  Tatars,  and  have  had 
whole  nights  made  comfortable  for  me  by  pas- 
toral Calmucks,  yet  I  have  never  fallen  asleep 
lulled  into  slumber  by  such  a  delicious  sense  of 
the  tender  solicitude  of  strangers  as  when,  be- 
lated, I  have  had  to  seek  temporary  shelter  in 
the  rude  dwelling  of  a  Russian  peasant.  Me- 
thinks  Dazh-bog,  the  sun-god,  were  he  to  wan- 
der to-day  into  the  hut  of  the  muzhik,  disguised 
as  a  man,  could  meet  there  with  no  better 
treatment  than  that  which  is  ungrudgingly, 
nay  gladly,  bestowed  upon  the  genuine  mortal. 
Remember,  moreover,  that  this  hospitality  is  its 
own  reward.  You  pay  the  dispenser  neither 
in  stories,  nor  in  praise,  nor  in  money.  Hence 
it  may  be  pertinent  to  ask,  with  such  a  mere 
survival  before  us,  what  must  this  Slav  virtue 
have  been  in  the  days  of  its  strength  ? 

For  characteristics  and  conceptions  innate  in 
the  national  and  individual  consciousness  of  the 
Russian  Slav,  we  must  look  to  the  bwyliny,  the 
epic  songs  of  the  people,  as  they  were  chanted 


84  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

before  the  coming  of  the  Mongols.  One  of  the 
most  striking  of  these  productions  personifies 
the  national  character  in  its  hero.  Ilya  Muro- 
mets  lives  with  his  parents  in  the  village  of 
Karachov.  Lame  in  both  hands  and  feet,  he 
sits  behind  the  stove  for  thirty  years.  But  one 
day  he  is  visited  by  Christ  and  two  apostles, 
disguised  as  travelers.  These  restore  him  to 
health  and  confer  upon  him  heroic  qualities. 
The  bwylina  recounts  the  story  of  his  subse- 
quent wandering  and  exploits.  Ilya  delights  in 
reflecting  that  he  is  no  knight  or  prince,  but 
simply  a  peasant ;  this  character  he  persists  in 
maintaining  to  the  end.  Political  or  social  am- 
bition he  has  none.  Ilya  is  a  practical  human- 
itarian. When  fallen  upon  by  robbers,  instead 
of  killing  them,  he  splits  an  oak  tree  with  a 
shaft  from  his  bow,  compelling  the  admiration 
of  his  assailants,  who  vainly  endeavor  to  per- 
suade him  to  become  their  chief.  At  the  taking 
of  Chernigov  he  refuses  to  put  the  population 
to  the  sword.  When  Vladimir,  his  prince,  sends 
a  man  to  certain  death  in  war,  in  order  that, 
like  David,  he  may  obtain  possession  of  the  be- 
reaved widow,  Ilya  reproaches  him  for  the  cow- 
ardly deed.  A  quarrel  ensues,  and  the  two  are 
long  estranged.  Yet  the  prince  has  need  of 
Ilya ;  and  when  the  hero's  services  are  necessary 
to  save  the  nation,  Ilya  forgets  all  the  insults 


OLD  RUSSIAN  LIFE.  85 

and  ingratitude  heaped  upon  him.  Vladimir  is 
represented  as  calling  upon  him,  with  a  sum- 
mons in  these  words :  "  I  beg  thee  to  save  the 
land,  not  for  my  sake,  not  for  my  wife's  sake, 
not  for  the  sake  of  the  churches  or  the  monas- 
teries, but  for  the  sake  of  the  widows  and  the 
little  children/'  At  first  there  is  a  little  re- 
monstrance. The  long  pent-up  indignation  finds 
an  outlet  in  reproach :  "  Why  hast  thou  so  long 
forbidden  me  the  road  to  Kiev  ?  "  The  prince 
repeats  his  entreaty ;  gradually  the  hero's  heart 
is  gained ;  he  forgets  his  wrongs,  and  sets  out 
to  save  the  nation.  It  is  characteristic  of  Ilya 
that,  for  patriotic  services  of  this  kind,  he  de- 
clines all  reward,  even  refuses  presents  offered 
to  him  by  the  prince.  And  Ilya's  traits  of  pity, 
gentleness,  kindness,  and  mercy  are  not  con- 
fined to  one  bwylina  alone,  but  find  a  certain 
expression  in  nearly  all  the  early  epic  songs. 
Of  delight  in  cruelty  for  cruelty's  sake,  there 
are  few  traces  ;  when  the  Russian  epic  displays 
deeds  of  bloodshed,  it  mentions  them  rather  as 
necessary  than  as  capricious  acts ;  the  general 
•impression  conveyed  associates  them  with  coarse 
and  rude  manners  rather  than  with  malicious 
bloodthirstiness.  In  one  song  it  is  said  that  no 
one  exceeds  Vladimir  in  happiness,  Ilya  in  giant 
strength,  Alesha  in  recklessness,  Dobrynya  in 
wisdom,  Potok  in  beauty,  Dunai  in  eloquence, 


THk 

Duk  in  riches,  or  Kirilo  in  grace.     There  is  no 
glorification  of  cruelty  here.1 

The  constituent  molecule  of  all  early  Russian 
life,  social  as  well  as  political,  was  the  freedom 
of  the  individual,  an  intense  consciousness  of 
personal  worth,  a  racial  tenaciousness  of  per- 
sonal rights.  Karamzin  tells  us  that  the  Rus- 
sian Slavs  "  tolerated  neither  rulers  nor  slaves," 
and  believed  in  "a  wild2  and  boundless  lib- 
erty "  as  the  chief  good  of  humanity.  Thus,  in 
the  early  Russian  epos,  we  find  expressed,  as  a 
fundamental  principle  underlying  all  thought, 
action,  and  relationship,  the  most  complete  free- 
dom of  the  individual.  Even  when  a  certain 
political  organization  became  necessary,  the 
Slavs  did  not  abate  one  jot  of  their  personal 
rights.  In  times  of  emergency,  members  of  a 
tribe  consulted  with  each  other  on  a  footing  of 
the  most  perfect  equality ;  and  if,  at  these  con- 
ferences, some  were  singled  out  for  special  def- 
erence, the  tribute  was  paid  to  age,  to  eloquence, 
or  to  warlike  qualities.  The  Slav  family,  of 
which  the  father  was  the  natural  head,  had 
patriarchal  customs  and  conceptions  at  its  foun- 

1  In  the  Ilya  story,  not  having  the  original  before  me,  I  have 
followed  M.  Viskovatov's  account. 

2  Karamzin,  in  a  moral  sketch,  entitled  Martha,  or  the  Mayor's 
Wife,  endeavored  to  prove  that  "political  order  can  only  exist 
where  absolute  power  has  been  established."  This  throws  not  a 
little  light  on  Karamzin's  prejudices  as  a  historian. 


OLD  RUSSIAN  LIFE.  87 

dation.     The  mir,  or  commune,  securing  joint 
possession  of  land  to  the  whole  people,  was  the 
family  on  a  large  scale ;  it  had  a  council,  or 
veehe,  in  which  each  household  was  represented. 
The  volost  was  a  union  of  communes,  with  a 
governing  body  or  council  formed  of  the  elders 
of  the  rnirs.     In  times  of  danger  it  was  cus- 
tomary for  the  volosti  of  a  tribe  to  appoint  a 
chief;   but   these   functions    of  headship   were 
purely  temporary.  The  people  carefully  guarded 
against  investing   one   of   their   number   with 
anything  like  permanent  authority.    Even  when 
merged  in  the  larger  organization  of  the  volost 
the  commune  retained  all  the  liberties  which 
belonged  to  it.     As  in  the  earlier  and  ruder 
conferences,   the   people   continued   to   discuss 
public  affairs  on  an  equal  footing.     They  had 
the  same  voice  in  dismissing  as  in  appointing 
their  temporary  chieftains.      After   a   time   a 
custom  arose  of  nominating  a  head  from  the 
elders  of  the  families  of  a  tribe.     But  the  first 
real  change  in  this  highly  popular  and  demo- 
cratic form  of  government  only  took  place  when 
the  Slavs  of  the  Ilmen  called  in  the  Varegs  to 
rule  over  them.     Looking  at  the  character  of 
these  Scandinavian  adventurers,  —  at  their  war- 
like manners  and  capacity  in  military  adminis- 
tration, —  one  is  prepared  to  see  the  democratic 
government  of  the  Slavs  yield  up  its  essential 


X 


88  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

features  to  the  political  dogmas  of  the  new- 
comers. Instead  of  mere  elders,  princes  now 
wielded  the  sovereignty  of  the  people.  Yet  the 
new  system  left  Russian  liberties  untouched. 
The  people,  as  Karamzin  says,  continued  to 
maintain  their  communal  institutions.  The 
veche  remained  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  towns, 
who  assembled  from  time  to  time  for  the  dis- 
cussion of  public  affairs.  The  chiefs,  or  head- 
men, civil  and  military,  were  elected,  not  by 
the  prince,  but  by  the  people,  who  chose  and 
dismissed  their  ruler  as  before,  sometimes  meet- 
ing to  punish  him  for  his  misconduct  by  a  sen- 
tence of  banishment. 1  The  Vareg  prince,  in 
fact,  took  his  place  in  the  Russian  political 
system  as  an  administrator,  rather  than  as  a 
ruler ;  as  a  public  servant  holding  his  position 
by  title  of  good  behavior,  rather  than  as  a 
master  claiming  it  as  an  hereditary  right  that 
could  be  maintained  by  force  of  arms. 

Under  the  rule  of  princes,  some  of  the  Slav 
towns  attained  to  considerable  political  distinc- 
tion as  republics.  Such  were  Novgorod,Viatka, 
and  Pskov.  In  each  of  these  centres  the  rights 
of  the  people  were  insisted  upon  and  conserved 
with  great  jealousy.  Five  times  did  the  Nov- 
gorodians  change  their  rulers  in  the  space  of 
seven  years ;  and,  in  order  to  set  bounds  to  the 

1  This  happened  at  Pskov  and  Novgorod. 


OLD  RUSSIAN  LIFE.  89 

power  of  the  prince  and  of  his  armed  retainers, 
known  as  the  druzhina,  the  citizens  compelled 
their  chief  to  promise,  on  oath,  a  strict  observ- 
ance of  their  privileges.  The  prince  could  not 
become  possessed  of  villages  in  the  territory- 
over  which  he  ruled.  In  harvesting  and  hunt- 
ing he  had  to  submit  to  restrictions  limiting 
him  to  certain  times  of  the  year.  Below  the 
prince  was  the  possadnik,  or  mayor,  whose  ten- 
ure of  office  seems  to  have  been  no  more  certain 
than  that  of  his  superior.  The  real  rulers  were 
the  people ;  for,  before  the  prince  could  take 
important  action,  he  had  to  obtain  their  consent 
in  veehe  assembled.  In  addition  to  Viatka  and 
Pskov,  towns  like  Polotsk,  Smolensk,  and  Ros- 
tov had  popular  councils  of  this  kind.  The 
smaller  villages  and  settlements  submitted  to 
the  guidance  of  the  town  populations.  Novgo- 
rod, moreover,  enjoyed  a  spiritual,  as  well  as  a 
political  independence.  After  the  introduction 
of  Christianit}'-,  the  vechS  of  the  republic  ap- 
pointed its  own  archbishop.  Such,  in  fact, 
was  the  democratic  and  uncompromising  spirit 
of  these  free  communities  that  later,  in  face 
of  the  Tatar  domination,  the  people  rose  in 
rebellion  against  Mongol  tax  collectors,  or  mur- 
dered their  possad?iik  for  daring  to  suggest  the 
wisdom  of  a  compromise  with  the  foe. 

Of  early  Russian  legislation  little  is  known. 


90  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

The  unwritten  code  in  use  prior  to  the  coming 
of  the  Varegs  must  have  been  of  a  rude  and 
ready  kind,  in  harmony  with  the  crudity  of 
early  Russian  civilization.  But  of  its  embodi- 
ment of  principles  afterwards  formally  ex- 
pressed in  historical  documents,  there  can  be 
no  doubt  whatever.  The  Russians  never  wholly 
surrendered  themselves  to  the  foreign  influences 
they  were  from  time  to  time  compelled  to  in- 
voke. If  they  accepted  the  rule  of  Scandina- 
vian princes,  they  preserved  intact,  as  long  as 
moral  resistance  and  armed  protest  were  of 
avail,  all  their  individual  and  communal  lib- 
erties. The  Slav  mir  has  maintained  itself 
through  all  the  vicissitudes  of  Russian  history 
to  this  day.  The  Russian  spirit  has  survived 
in  every  mingling  of  native  with  Asiatic  races. 
Hence  we  are  justified  in  assuming  that  the 
first  Russian  code  of  laws,  —  the  Russkaya 
Pravda}  —  though  drawn  up  under  Scandi- 
navian influence,  preserved  the  spirit  of  Russian 
law  as  it  existed  prior  to  the  coming  of  the 
Varegs  in  the  ninth  century.  In  the  character 
of  the  code  itself,  this  assumption  meets  with 
the  strongest  support.  Its  ruling  trait  is  hu- 
manitarianism,  —  the  humanitarianism  of  Ilya, 
of  the  Slav  epic,  of  the  Russian  nature  uncor- 
rupted   by   the    dangers    and   temptations    of 

1  Reign  of  Yaroslav  (1016-1054). 


OLD  RUSSIAN  LIFE.  91 

power.  Of  criminal  law,  as  it  is  understood  in 
modern  times,  the  code  contains  scarcely  a  trace. 
Public  prisons  were  unknown.  No  legal  sanc- 
tion was  given  to  corporal  punishment,  nor 
were  tortures  practiced  to  induce  confessions, 
or  debtors  beaten  because  of  their  poverty.  It 
was  the  signal  glory  of  Russia  in  her  rudest 
days  that  she  refused  to  subscribe  to  the  bar- 
barous doctrine  that  the  taking  of  one  life 
necessarily  demands  the  extinction  of  another, * 
and  was  equally  remiss  in  carrying  to  its  logical 
conclusion  the  not  less  barbarous  practice  of 
making  collective  murder  a  glorious  virtue  and 
private  murder  an  offense  worthy  of  the  deepest 
execration. 

In  this  first  period  of  their  history  the  Rus- 
sians thus  enjoyed  what,  in  a  political  sense,  we 
are  fairly  entitled  to  regard  as  the  golden  age 
of  their  national  existence.  As  free  individuals 
they  ruled  themselves.  Not  only  had  each  citi- 
zen or  each  agriculturist  a  voice  in  the  manage- 
ment of  public  affairs :  his  influence  was  as 
direct  as  his  resolve  was  final.  No  complex 
machinery  deranged  the  popular  will,  or  changed 
its  direction,  or  scattered  its  energies  ;  no  prince, 
or  possadnik,  or  ataman,  dared  veto  the  decis- 
ions of  the  veche.     It  was  from  a  picturesque 

1  At  this  day  capital  punishment  exists  in  Russia  only  for 
political  murder. 


92  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

point  of  view  the  grandest,  from  an  administra- 
tive point  of  view  the  simplest,  and  from  a 
moral  point  of  view  the  most  equitable  form  of 
government  ever  devised  by  man.  And  to-day, 
though  the  veche  lives  on,  a  mere  shadow  of  its 
former  self,  quite  divorced  from  political  ad- 
ministration, and  engaged,  instead  of  in  the 
business  of  the  nation,  in  discussing  crops,  har- 
vests, and  the  raising  of  the  communal  tax,  it 
still  embodies  the  same  intolerance  of  sover- 
eignty as  that  which  characterized  the  early 
Slavs.  So  when  an  old  chronicler,1  alluding 
to  the  temper  of  the  Russians,  said  of  them, 
"Neminem  ferant  imperatorem,"  he  was  de- 
scribing that  ineradicable  spirit  of  antipathy 
to  encroachments  upon  individual  and  popular 
liberties  which  lies  at  the  root  of  all  political 
discontent  in  Russia,  and  which  in  that  country 
makes  any  compromise  with  the  principle  of 
autocratic  rule  radically  and  permanently  im- 
possible. 

1  Cited  in  Karamzin's  notes,  vol.  i. 


BYZANTINISM   AND   THE   THREE 
UNITIES. 


The  Russia  upon  which  our  glance  fell  in 
the  last  chapter  was  the  Russia  of  the  eastern 
Slavs ;  the  Russia  in  which  the  racial  tendencies 
of  the  people  had  still  free  play ;  the  Russia 
which  had  bowed  its  neck  to  no  tyranny,  sys- 
tem or  principle  ;  the  Russia  in  which  individ- 
uals and  communities  alike  held  within  their 
grasp  that  most  sacred  of  all  possessions,  liberty. 
But  the  Russia  upon  which  we  are  now  about 
to  look  is  a  new  Russia,  a  Russia  so  metamor- 
phosed that  one  can  scarcely  recognize  it  to  be 
the  same ;  a  Russia  blighted  into  asceticism  by 
religion,  humiliated  and  debased  by  enslave- 
ment, and  finally  handed  over  to  the. cupidities 
and  tyrannies  of  absolute  power.  So  rude  and 
sudden  a  change  was  perhaps  never  before 
known  in  the  history  of  national  vicissitudes; 
one  so  grave  and  far  reaching  in  its  consequen- 
ces has  fallen  to  the  lot  of  no  other  country.  It 
long  crushed  the  Slav  spirit ;  it  brought  to  a 
standstill  almost  all  the  racial  tendencies.  It  was 


94  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

the  damming-up  of  that  great  stream  of  national 
life  that  was  one  day  to  overflow  its  banks  in  a 
wide  devastation. 

The  two  events  that  for  seven  centuries  of 
Russian  history  reduce  every  other  occurrence 
in  the  national  life  to  an  almost  absolute  insig- 
nificance were  the  conversion  of  the  people  to 
Christianity  and  their  enslavement  by  the  Ta- 
tar Mongols.  Essentially  distinct  in  their  char- 
acter, separated  from  each  other  not  only  by 
three  centuries  in  point  of  time,  but  also  by 
that  immense  interval  which  stood  between  the 
barbarism  of  Asia  and  the  culture  of  Byzantium, 
the  two  influences  were  yet  so  closely  related 
in  their  effects  that  to  the  student  of  Russian 
history  they  must  ever  seem  rather  the  elements 
of  a  subtle  union,  devised  for  the  accomplish- 
ment of  a  common  aim,  than  any  mere  fortuitous 
concurrence  of  forces  at  once  separate  and  dis- 
similar. In  some  sort  the  Tatars  may  be  said 
to  have  completed  the  work  begun  by  the  Greek 
Church.  If  from  Constantinople  the  priests 
brought  to  Kiev  the  idea  of  a  political  autocracy, 
the  Tatar  Khans  materially  helped  to  weld  the 
scattered  elements  of  government  into  a  central- 
ized administration.  If  Byzantium  contributed 
the  conception  of  a  unified  state,  Sarai'1  taught 

2  I  need  scarcely  remind  the  reader  that  Sarai  was  not  only  the 
seat  of  Tatar  dominion  in  Russia,  but  the  place  of  pilgrimage  for 
the  subject  princes. 


BYZANTINISM.  95 

an  easy  way  of  raising  money  for  its  expenses. 
So  completely  at  times  are  the  two  influences 
interwoven  that  to  decide  always  what  was  the 
result  of  Greek  ecclesiasticism,  and  what  the 
effect  of  the  Tatar  domination,  would  be  a  task 
not  only  difficult,  but  unnecessary.  In  some 
cases,  nevertheless,  the  result  is  distinctly  trace- 
able to  the  cause. 

Let  us  first  consider  the  changes  wrought  or 
enforced  in  the  manners  of  the  people  by  Byzan- 
tine ecclesiasticism.  Concerning  these  a  large 
store  of  information  has  been  preserved  in  that 
already  cited  document,  the  "  Domostroi,"  or 
household  guide,  the  composition  of  one  Sylves- 
ter, church  dignitary,  and  counselor  of  Ivan  the 
Terrible.  In  this  composition  we  find  reflected 
not  only  the  injunctions  and  prohibitions  of  the 
Greek  Church,  but  also  the  actual  attitude  of 
the  people  towards  almost  every  possible  prob- 
lem of  conduct,  private  and  public,  that  the  in- 
genuity of  the  time  could  suggest.  Some  traits 
of  the  "  Domostroi "  are  undoubtedly  humani- 
tarian in  their  character.  It  enjoined  the  peo- 
ple to  show  kindness  to  the  poor,  and  to  make 
presents  of  money  and  food  to  those  in  prison. 
Certain  practices  of  cleanliness  and  morality 
were  also  inculcated.  But  the  general  effect  of 
the  new  religious  influences  was  to  turn  Russia 
into  a  vast  monastery,  full  of  fasting,  penance- 


96  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

doing,  and  mortification  of  the  flesh.1  And 
though  Greek,  like  Roman,  Christianity  placed 
its  ban  upon  the  most  innocent  enjoyments  of 
life,  no  wave  of  Puritanism  ever  swept  over  the 
west  of  Europe  with  so  deadening  an  effect  upon 
the  heart  and  the  imagination  as  that  exerted 
in  the  East  by  the  gloomy  flood  of  Byzantine 
monasticism  which  is  seen  depicted  in  the  "  Do- 
mostro'i."  It  seemed  as  if  the  priests  of  the  new 
faith,  beginning  with  a  gospel  of  renunciation, 
at  last  sought  to  bring  their  task  to  its  climax 
by  teaching  the  criminality  of  life  itself.  They 
were  not  content  with  forbidding  horse-racing, 
hunting,  and  dice-playing  ;  the  Church  con- 
demned music  and  musical  instruments  of  all 
kinds  ;  it  taught  that  even  laughing  was  a  sin. 
For  a  single  member  of  the  household  to  commit 
the  crime  of  dancing  or  singing  was  to  prepare 
the  whole  family  for  eternal  torments  in  hell. 
Even  so  late  as  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth 
century  it  was  considered  a  sin  for  a  father  to 
allow  a  child  in  play  to  take  him  by  the  beard. 
All  intercourse  between  the  young  of  the  two 
sexes  was  forbidden.  "  The  youth,"  says  Ivan 
Possoshkov,  "must  be  taken  to  account  for 
every  idle  word  he  speaks." 

1  See  Opwyt  istoriko-literaturnavo  Islyedovaniya  o  Proiskhozh- 
denii  Drevnorvsskavo  Domostroya,  I.  S.  Nekrassova.  Moskva, 
1872. 


BYZANTINISM.  97 

The  political  influence  wielded  from  the  mo- 
ment of  its  appearance  in  Russia  by  the  Greek 
Church  was  one  antagonistic  to  Slav  methods 
of  public  life  and  government.  The  national 
system  had  the  freedom  of  the  individual  as  its 
foundation.  Upon  this  rested  the  liberties  of 
the  communes  and  the  towns,  the  privileges  of 
the  Slav  republics,  the  free  will  of  the  people  in 
the  choice  and  dismissal  of  their  ruler,  and  in 
the  settlement  of  all  public  affairs.  The  organ- 
ization of  the  Russian  country  was  that  of  the 
rod,  the  tribe  or  family  on  a  large  scale,  the 
prince  ruling  as  an  administrator  and  trans- 
mitting his  appanages  to  his  children.  Here 
was  a  purely  democratic  form  of  government. 
It  was  this  which  the  Greek  Church  attacked 
at  its  very  foundation.  The  ideal  brought  to 
Russia  by  Byzantine  priests  was  one  in  which 
the  individual  should  count  as  nothing,  and  the 
ruler  as  the  be-all  and  the  end-all  of  the  new 
state.  Just  as  that  ideal  had  replaced  the  many 
gods  of  the  Slav  polytheism  by  a  single  divin- 
ity, so  it  aimed  at  gathering  the  scattered  poten- 
tialities of  princely  rule  into  the  hands  of  a  sin- 
gle Christian  Ceesar,  the  type  of  the  monarcbs 
of  Constantinople.  And  if  the  deities  of  the 
woods  and  rivers,  of  the  earth  and  sea  and  air 
could  so  readily  yield  up  their  territories  to  the 
sway  of  the  monotheistic  God,  church  digni- 


98  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

taries  naturally  argued  that  it  would  be  just  as 
easy  to  familiarize  the  people  with  the  concep- 
tion of  an  earthly  ruler  having  dominion,  not 
over  one  rod  alone,  but  over  all  the  branches  of 
the  eastern  Slavs.  Gradually,  if  not  simultane- 
ously, Byzantine  Christianity  promulgated  in 
Russia  the  three  ideas  of  unity  in  deity,  unity  in 
sovereignty,  and  unity  in  territory.  The  victory 
of  monotheism,  secured  by  force,  proved  easy. 
For  a  time  the  old  method  of  government  main- 
tained itself  intact.  But  as  Byzantine  ideas, 
strengthened  in  their  influence  by  appeals  to 
the  religious  emotions,  became  predominant, 
the  princes  began  to  take  more  ambitious 
views  of  their  functions  as  rulers.  Instead  of 
dividing  the  appanages  amongst  their  children, 
we  now  see  them  bequeathing  patrimonies  to 
their  political  successors.  In  the  fierce  struggle 
which  follows,  for  the  preservation  of  power  on 
the  one  hand,  for  the  accumulation  of  power  on 
the  other,  the  grand  princes  of  Moscow,  aided 
by  wealth  acquired  as  financial  agents  of  the 
Tatar  Khans,  win  undisputed  supremacy  over 
their  rivals.  In  the  fifteenth  century,  under 
Ivan  III.,  the  work  of  territorial  unification  is 
accomplished  and  the  country  sees  the  end  of 
the  Mongol  domination.  A  few  decades  later 
Ivan  IV.  assumes  the  title  of  Tsar.  In  1547, 
Russia  has  unity  in  deity,  unity  in  territory, 


BYZANTINISM.  99 

and  unity  in  sovereignty.    The  Byzantine  ideas 
have  triumphed. 

But  what  was  the  price  paid  by  Russia  for 
the  principles  of  autocracy  and  centralization  ? 
Two  interesting  correlations  of  cause  and  effect 
meet  us  at  the  outset.  As  long  as  Russian  gov- 
ernment retained  its  simple,  patriarchal  char- 
acter, the  necessities  of  the  state  were  small 
and  easily  supplied.  As  long  as  Russian  rulers 
were  only  the  servants  of  the  people,  the  priv- 
ileges of  the  veches  remained  intact,  the  free- 
dom of  the  individual  underwent  no  curtail- 
ment. But  the  moment  the  princes  began  to 
aim  at  the  Byzantine  type  of  state,  that  mo- 
ment the  old  methods  of  raising  money  became 
inadequate.  As  soon  as  governors  sought  to 
override  rather  than  obey  the  popular  will,  so 
soon  were  the  first  attacks  made  upon  individ- 
ual and  communal  freedom.  And  just  as  surely 
as  Russia  moved  in  the  direction  of  unity  and 
of  autocracy,  so  surely  did  she  create  for  herself 
embarrassments  that  were  to  find  their  relief 
in  but  a  single  kind  of  remedy,  namely,  the 
debasement  of  the  people.  The  Mongol  domi- 
nation taught  the  princes  the  double  art  of 
amassing  wealth  and  accumulating  power.  In 
the  new  government  the  individual  fell  from 
the  status  of  a  free  personality,  privileged  to 
join  in  the  choice  of  a  ruler,  to  the  level  of  a 


100  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

mere  taxable  unit,  not  only  robbed  of  every 
vestige  of  political  power,  but  in  many  cases 
metamorphosed  into  a  serf.  The  Mongol  Tatars 
enslaved  the  Russians,  and  the  Russians,  profit- 
ing by  the  lesson  in  finance,  enslaved  their 
working  agriculturists. 

So  much  for  the  fiscal  penalties  which  the 
Byzantine  policy  brought  in  its  wake.  Not  less 
heavy  were  its  political  burdens.  The  Slav 
system  differed  from  all  other  European  meth- 
ods of  government.  The  right  to  reign  over 
western  nations  was  based  upon  conquest ;  the 
right  to  reign  over  Russia  had  been  conferred 
by  the  free  choice  of  the  people.  The  west 
European  state  had  its  foundations  in  force 
majeure;  the  old  Slav  state  rested  upon  the 
will,  freely  exercised,  of  the  individuals  of  whom 
it  was  composed.  We  now  see  this  will  ignored 
with  the  most  cynical  disregard  for  tradition, 
habit,  and  equity.  In  order  that  one  prince  may 
rule  over  Russia  to  the  exclusion  of  all  the 
rest,1  territories  like  those  of  Tver,  Riazan, 
Suzdal,  and  Novgorod-Sever  sky  are  wrested 
from  their  owners.  In  order  that  there  may 
be  but  one  seat  of  empire  in  Russia,  the  great 
republics  of  Novgorod,  Pskov,  and  Viatka  lose 
their  liberties  and  go  to  swell  the  possessions  of 

1  Nearly  three  hundred  princes  disputed  the  throne  of  Kiev 
alone. 


BYZANTINISM.  101 

Moscow.  At  last  there  is  a  united  Russia.  But 
there  has  been  no  union  consented  to  by  the 
people.  The  people  have  persistently  resisted 
the  centralizing  aims  of  ambitious  politicians. 
Hence,  at  whatever  shock  to  the  historical 
method  of  dealing  with  such  processes,  I  must 
call  the  "  unification  "  of  Russia  a  simple  usur- 
pation, the  "  collection  of  the  Russian  earth  » 
by  the  princes  an  unvarnished  stealing  of  lands 
that  did  not  belong  to  them.  It  must  be  left 
to  the  subsequent  events  of  Russian  history  to 
show  what  permanent  acquiescence  there  could 
be  in  a  policy  that,  taking  advantage  of  the 
national  misfortune  to  effect  a  mechanical  union 
of  ethnological  elements  mutually  repulsive, 
signally  reversed  the  whole  course  of  Slav  tradi- 
tion and  history. 

The  change  was  one  that  affected  all  classes 
of  society  and  all  forms  of  the  national  life. 
For  autocracy  to  appear  at  the  apex  of  the 
pyramid  without  slavery  appearing  at  its  base 
would  have  involved  a  complete  negation  of 
the  laws  which  govern  the  distribution  of  social 
and  political  forces.  And  so  one  by  one  come 
the  dark  shadows  cast  in  this  eclipse  of  popular 
liberties.  First  we  see  the  house-servant  become 
a  chattel  in  the  domicile  of  his  master,  and 
then  witness  the  binding  of  the  toiler  in  the 
furrow  to  the  land  which  he  believes  to  be  his 


102  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

own.  The  family,  in  early  Slav  times  "  a  re- 
public," *  now  displays  the  characteristics  of  an 
autocracy.  The  father's  relation  to  it  is  that 
of  a  despot,  permitted  by  the  law  and  enjoined 
by  the  church  to  keep  wixev-GhiMren,  and  do- 
mestics in  subjection  by  means  o'f  the1  rod. 
"  Children  should  be  beaten  with  sticks,"  sa^ysT 
the  "  Domostro'i,"  "  for  the  good  of  their  souls." 
"  The  more  a  child  is  beaten,"  wrote  Ivan  Pos- 
soshkov  some  centuries  later,  but  in  much  the 
same  spirit,  "  the  better  it  becomes."  *  "  If  you  " 
play  with  a  child,  you  spoil  it ;  the  more  -se- 
verely you  beat  it,  the  more  joy  you  will  have 
afterwards."  "  Love  is  shown  to  children  in 
proportion  to  the  number  of  beatings  given  to 
them  by  their  parents."  2 

Let  us  now  follow  the  new  despotism  into 
the  domain  of  law.  Here,  again,  the  metamor- 
phosis is  complete.  Punishments,  frightful  and 
vindictive,  have  taken  the  place  of  the  early 
humanitarian  code.  Russia's  gaols  are  chambers 
of  horrors,  red  with  every  refinement  and  bar- 
barism of  cruelty  that  Mongolism  and'Byzan- 
tinism  can  together  contrive  in  the  interests  of 
absolute  power.  Here  they  are  knouting  a  poor 
wretch   to   death ;   there,  a   criminal  is   being 

1  Karamzin's  expression. 

2  The  changes  wrought  in  the  treatment  of  women  I  shall  treat 
in  a  special  and  separate  chapter. 


BYZANTINISM.  103 

broken  on  the  wheel ;  in  that  iron  cage  yonder, 
a  "  sorcerer  "  hangs  suspended  over  "a  slow  fire ; 
further  still,  a  coiner  lies  bound  with  his  jaws 
forced  open  waiting  for  the  draught  of  molten  - 
metal  that  is-  £o  burn  out  his  vitals.     Here  they  j 
are,  digging  a  hole  wherein  to  bury  alive  some  J 
woman  who,  in  a  fit  of  despair,  has  poisoned  her 
brqtal v  husband  ;  there,  instruments  are  being, 
got  ready  whereby  the  criminal  may  be  hung,." 
decapitated,  or  torn  to  death  piece  by  piece. 

Torture  is  thus  the  new  method  of  dealing 
with  some  of  the  more  serious  breaches  of  . 
Russian  law.-  The  penalty  of  death  has  been/ 
introduced  for  homicide  ;  theft  has  come  to  be 
an  offense  punishable  by  public  chastisement. 
Not  the  least  signal  difference  between  the 
character  of  the  "  Russkaya  Pravda  "  (eleventh 
century),  and  that  of  the  "Ulozhenie'  "  (1497) 
and  the  "  Sudebnik  "  (sixteenth  century),  lay 
hi  the  prominence  given  by  the  two  latter  codes 
to  the  remedy  of  corporal  punishment.  Under' 
Scandinavian  influence  the  Slavs  had  allowed 
murder  to  be  regarded  as  a  private  injury  and 
redressed  by  private  reprisal  or  the  payment 
of  a  sum  of  money.  Under  Byzantine  influ- 
ence they  made  all  acts  of  vengeance  the  busi- 
ness of  the  state,  and  for  the  money  penalty 
substituted  a  degrading  corporal  punishment. 
The  debtor  who  persistently  continued  to  be 


104  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

poor  was  treated  with  revolting  cruelty.  He 
was  subjected  to  a  public  chastisement  known 
as  the  pravezh,  and  ran  the  risk  of  becoming 
the  slave  of  his  creditor. 

The  debtor,  it  should  be  remembered,  repre- 
sented crime  in  one  of  the  most  heinous  shapes 
which,  in  the  new  order  of  things,  it  could  pos- 
sibly assume.  The  novelties  of  centralization 
and  autocratic  power  rested  as  an  immense  bur- 
den upon  the  tax-paying  classes,  and  for  a  man 
to  be  found  unable  to  contribute  his  share  of 
the  expenses,  or  pleading  poverty  with  a  view 
of  escaping  exaction,  must  have  seemed  to  Mos- 
cow legislators  so  remarkable  a  case  of  human 
perversity  as  to  call  for  as  severe  and  ingenious 
a  method  of  punishment  as  they  could  devise. 

The  debasement  of  the  individual  was  inev- 
itable. In  place  of  the  old  manly  self -con- 
sciousness we  find  a  servility  painful  to  witness, 
even  at  this  distance.  Distinctions  of  class  have 
appeared,  bringing  with  them  practices  of  self- 
humiliation  and  abasement.  The  noble  is  as 
servile  to  his  prince  or  tsar  as  is  the  muzhik  to 
the  land-owner.  In  signing  their  names  people 
write  them  with  unworthy  diminutives,  in  the 
Eastern  fashion.  No  longer  with  form  erect 
and  look  unabashed  does  the  Russian  Slav  ap- 
proach his  ruler,  but  in  fear  and  trembling. 
The   very  word   used  for  petition   means    "  a 


BYZANTIN1SM.  105 

prostration,"  a  beating  of  the  head  on  the 
ground.1  It  is  highly  probable  that  the  expres- 
sion vinovat  ("  I  am  guilty,"  corresponding  to 
the  English  "I  beg  pardon  ")  came  into  exist- 
ence during  this  period  of  universal  debasement. 
Instead  of  a  character  like  Ilya,  the  national 
epic  now  brings  forth  Ivanushka  Durachok,2  a 
hero  in  caricature,  who  evades  dangers  to  save 
his  skin,  plays  the  fool  in  order  the  more  effect- 
ually to  impose  upon  people,  and  attains  to 
honors  and  dignities  by  acts  of  base  cunning 
and  low  servility.  In  Ivanushka  Durachok  we 
see  the  new  period  just  as  truly  as  in  Ilya  we 
saw  the  old. 

Lying  and  cunning  are  first  mentioned  as 
Russian  vices  after  the  Mongol  domination. 
And  if  to-day  certain  classes  of  Russian  peas- 
ants, engaged  in  urban  industries,  still  resort  to 
deceit  and  subterfuge  in  compassing  their  ends, 
they  do  so  as  a  result  of  the  straits  in  which 
their  ancestors  were  placed  by  Russian  princes 
and  Tatar  khans.  Cunning  in  the  subject  was 
the  natural  result  of  cupidity  in  the  ruler.  The 
more  the  people  came  to  be  regarded  as  the 
legitimate  prey  of  the  tax-gatherer,  the  more 
they  learned  the  force  of  ruse,  the  advantage  of 
stratagem,  in  their  struggle  with  the  common 
enemy.     And  if  deceit  arose  in  this  way  out  of 

i  "  ChelobityeV'  2  « ivaili  the  Little  Fool." 


106  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

an  unscrupulous  system  of  money-raising,  the 
habit  of  lying,  as  it  first  appears  in  Russian  his- 
tory, had  a  not  less  prolific  cause  in  the  national 
and  individual  enslavement.  The  tricky  trader, 
found  to-day  the  victim  of  corrupting  urban  in- 
fluences, is  the  natural  descendant  of  the  class 
which  had  to  hold  its  own  against  the  tax-gath- 
erer, or  oppose  duplicity  to  the  power  of  the 
tyrannical  owner  of  serfs.  The  generous-minded 
peasant,  full  of  patriarchal  simplicity,  alike  in- 
capable of  dishonesty  and  untruthfulness,  be- 
longs in  his  rural  isolation  to  an  ancestry  which 
had  not  yet  felt  the  Mongol  domination,  or  had 
passed  through  it  proof  against  its  corruption 
and  debasement. 

The  main  weight  of  the  exactions  of  grand 
prince,  khan,  and  tsar  must  have  been  felt  by 
Moscow,  which,  first  the  nucleus  of  the  coming 
state,  finally  became  the  seat  of  the  new  gov- 
ernment. And  it  is  of  the  inhabitants  of  Mos- 
cow that  Herberstein  wrote,  just  after  Russia 
had  rid  herself  of  the  Tatars,  "  They  are  more 
cunning  and  deceitful  than  all  others."  The 
same  people  are  alluded  to  in  the  passage  con- 
cerning Plescov.1  "The  citizens,"  says  Her- 
berstein, "  were  dispersed,  and  Muscovites  sent 
in  to  replace  them.  Hence  it  followed  that,  in 
place  of    the   more   refined   and    consequently 

1  Probably  Pskov. 


BYZANTINISM.  107 

more  kindly  manners  of  the  people,  were  intro- 
duced those  of  the  Muscovites,  which  are  more 
debased  in  almost  everything.  There  was  al- 
ways so  much  integrity,  candor,  and  simplicity 
in  the  dealings  of  the  Plescovians  that  they 
dispensed  with  all  superfluity  of  words  for  the 
purpose  of  entrapping  a  buyer." 

Such,  then,  are  a  few  of  the  ways  in  which 
Mongolism  and  Byzantine  Christianity  left  their 
mark  upon  Russian  development.  The  influ- 
ence of  the  former  was,  as  we  have  seen,  wholly 
injurious.  That  of  Christianity  was  in  some 
respects  bad,  in  others  good.  To  Europeanize 
the  family,  as  M.  Rambaud  has  described  the 
operation,  was  an  achievement  of  no  small  mag- 
nitude and  importance.  But  the  benefits  con- 
ferred by  Christianity  were  simply  the  benefits 
of  a  religious  system  that  proved  itself  superior, 
for  the  purposes  of  civilization,  to  the  faith  of 
the  early  Slavs.  The  defects  of  that  system 
were,  on  the  other  hand,  the  defects  of  the  By- 
zantinism  in  which  it  was  naturally  entangled. 
Russia  drew  much  strength  and  sustenance,  much 
power  of  patient  endurance,  during  the  Mongol 
domination,  from  the  teachings  and.  ministra- 
tions of  her  new  faith  ;  yet  her  spiritual  help 
in  that  trying  time  would  have  been  just  as 
great,  might  even  have  been  greater,  had  she 
obtained  it  through  the  Western,  instead  of  from 


108  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

the  Eastern  Church.  The  civilization  promoted 
by  the  Catholic  Church  was  a  higher  and  more 
promising  one  than  any  that  could  be  brought 
to  Russia  by  the  priests  of  the  Greek  rite.  At 
the  time  of  Russia's  conversion,  the  civilization 
of  Constantinople  was  very  much  inferior  to 
that  of  western  Europe.  If  Russia  escaped 
Catholicism,  she  did  it  by  preferring  an  inferior 
to  a  superior  degree  of  enlightenment.  If  by 
separating  her  church  history  from  that  of  the 
Poles  the  country  escaped  the  tyranny  of  Papal 
edicts,  she  on  the  other  hand  submitted  to  a  con- 
nection of  church  with  state  that  finally  became 
an  instrument  as  well  as  a  bulwark  of  absolute 
power.  If  Christianity  brought  refining  influ- 
ences into  Russian  life,  it  also  imported  views 
and  conceptions  quite  opposed  to  the  martial 
element  of  the  Slav  character ;  in  this  way  it 
may  have  prepared  the  country  to  some  extent 
for  the  Tatar  domination.  Certain  it  is  that 
the  new  faith  inculcated  greater  respect  for  life 
—  especially  for  Christian  life.1  It  helped  to 
soften  manners  and  to  modify  in  the  individual 
and  the  nation  some  of  the  qualities  essential 
to  the  successful  practice  of  war.  It  must  be 
remembered,  moreover,  that  the  conversion  of 

1  Vladfmir,  in  a  direction  to  his  son,  wrote,  * '  Put  to  death  no 
one,  be  he  innocent  or  guilty.  Nothing  is  more  sacred  than  the 
soul  of  a  Christian." 


BYZANTINISM.  109 

the  Russians  to  Christianity  was  a  forcible  and 
not  a  voluntary  proceeding.  To  this,  rather 
than  to  the  fact  that  the  new  faith  was  thrust 
upon  them  by  a  dissolute  prince  like  Vladimir, 
are  due  the  long  survival  of  pagan  customs  in 
Russia,  and  the  necessity  under  which  the 
church  found  itself  of  compromising  with  the 
beliefs  which  it  could  not  uproot.  Nor  is  this 
all.  In  the  Slav  correlation  of  forces,  all  vio- 
lent reversal  of  ethnological  habits,  all  nega- 
tions of  racial  tendency  and  tradition  invariably 
reappear  in  the  form  of  protest.  The  protest 
against  this  forcible  indoctrination  of  the  Rus- 
sians into  Byzantine  Christianity  took  the  form 
of  the  raskol  or  "  split,"  and  later  came  to  be 
known  as  Russian  sectarianism,  heresy,  dissent. 


DOMESTIC  SLAVERY. 


Theee  is  no  figure,  perhaps,  in  all  Russian 
history  upon  which  the  eye  rests  with  greater 
sympathy  and  interest  than,  collectively  speak- 
ing, that  of  the  Slav  woman  as  w^e  see  it,  first 
freely  moving  in  a  pagan  environment,  then 
subjected  to  the  regulating  influences  of  Byzan- 
tine Christianity,  and  finally  emancipated  by 
the  teachings  of  Western  culture.  It  is  ^this 
figure  which  seems  ever  bringing  into1  Russian 
life,  however  sad  or  gloomy  that  life  may  be, 
priceless  consolations,  impulses  of  hope  and  faith 
and  aspiration,  as  with  the  odor  of  flowers  and 
the  exhilaration  of  song.  So  thoroughly  respon- 
sive, moreover,  has  been  the  position  of  Russian 
women  to  the  national  vicissitudes  that  we  may 
fitly  divide  its  story  into  the  same  three  great 
periods  as  those  selected  for  the  wider  theme. 
The  only  difficulty  of  the  parallel  is  encountered 
at  the  outset.  As  the  first  coincides  to  some 
extent  with  the  polygamous  epoch  of  Russian 
history,  it  may  seem  optimistic  to  look  for  much 
veneration  of  women  in  a  family  of  which  the 


DOMESTIC  SLAVERY.  Ill 

conceptions  were  elementary  and  the  ties  loose  ; 
yet  it  should  be  remembered  that,  as  in  most 
Oriental  countries  where  the  institution  of  polyg- 
amy expresses  a  general  permission,  but  by  no 
means  a  general  practice,  the  keeping  of  many 
wives  would  be  confined  to  the  wealthy  classes, 
and  quite  foreign  to  the  habits  of  the  poor 
amongst  the  Slavs.  The  treatment  of  the  Rus- 
sian woman  in  the  pagan  period  is  no  more  to 
be  gauged  by  the  prevalence  of  polygamous 
habits  than  the  civilization  of  the  United  States 
is  to  be  judged  by  a  reference  to  the  practices 
of  Mormons  in  Utah.  Just  as  the  first  period 
of  Russian  history  was  favorable  to  individual 
liberties,  to  personal  rights,  so  it  was  favorable 
to  the  status  of  women.  The  Slav  woman  was 
not  Jess  a  member  of  the  old  family  republic 
than  the  man  ;  of  her  influence  in  it,  whether  as 
the  spouse  of  the  common  peasant,  or  the  con- 
fidant and  counselor  of  the  earliest  Russian 
princes,  there  are  ample  proofs.  This  Slav  wo- 
man—  polygamy  or  no  polygamy  —  was  quite" 
able  to  take  care  of  herself  and  watch  over  her 
own  interests.  ,  In  the  old  chronicles  she  stands 
before  us  strong  of  will,  with  plenty  of  chaf acter 
and  patriotism,  bold  in  conception,  fertile  of  re-, 
source,  capable  of  lofty  heroism  and  sublime 
negation  of  self. 

Flames  form  the  setting  of  the  picture  that 


112  THE  RUSSIAN  REYOLT.    c' 

represents  her  first  noticeable  appearance  on  the 
stage  of  Slav  history.  Numberless  Russian  wo- 
men, not  yet  emancipated  from  the  close  attach- 
ments of  paganism,  flung  themselves  upon  the 
pyres  that  were  consuming  the  bodies  of  hus- 
bands whom  they  refused  to  survive.  Euphra- 
sia, whose  husband  suffered  death  rather  than 
deliver  her  to  Bati,  the  Tatar  invader,  no  sooner 
learned  her  spouse's  fate  than  she  seized  her  son 
and  with  him  sprang  headlong  from  the  window 
of  her  terem.  When  Vladimir,  who  Christian- 
ized Russia,  had  sent  Vassilissa's  husband  to 
certain  death  in  battle  in  order  that  he  might 
possess  the  warrior's  bereaved  and  helpless  wi- 
dow, Vassilissa,  like  a  true  Slav  woman,  hurried 
to  the  spot  where  her  lord  had  fallen,  and  there 
mingled  her  own  blood  with  his.  In  the  annals 
of  Novgorod  we  read  how  Marfa,  widow  of  the 
possadnik  Boretsky,  won  undying  fame  as  the 
last  defender  of  Novgorod  liberties.  Placing 
herself  at  the  head  of  the  anti-Muscovite  party 
she  brought  all  her  energy,  boldness,  force  of 
character,  and  wealth  to  the  task  of  erecting  a 
last  barrier  against  the  tide  of  enslavement  that 
was  gradually  but  surely  overwhelming  the 
country ;  and  so  successful  was  the  effort  that 
for  a  brief  interval  we  see  Novgorod  sheltered 
from  the  Muscovite  attack  by  the  protecting 
wing  of  Poland. 


^  DOMESTIC  SLAVERY.  113 

There 'are  abundant  evidences  that  Russian 
women  not  only  shared  in  the  advantages  con- 
ferred by  that  conception  of  individual  rights 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  was  common  to  early 
Slav  society,  but  were  specially  honored  in  vari- 
ous ways,  notably  in  their  capacity  to  inherit, 
and  their  opportunities  of  accumulating  wealth. 
Some  of  the  oldest  Russian  kurgany,  or  burial 
mounds,  have  yielded  in  excavation  skeletons 
of  women  richly  ornamented  with  jewels.  Ly- 
bed,  the  sister  of  the  founder  of  Kiev,  was  able 
to  divide  an  inheritance  with  her  brothers.  At 
the  sacking  of  towns  by  the  Tatars  we  read  of 
"  women,  the  wives  of  boyards,  who  had  never 
known  work,  who  but  a  short  time  before  had 
been  clothed  in  rich  garments,  adorned  with 
jewels  and  cloths  of  gold,  and  surrounded  with 
slaves,  now  themselves  reduced  to  be  the  slaves 
of  the  barbarians."  This  deferential  treatment 
of  Slav  women  continued  up  to  the  eleventh  and 
twelfth  century.  And  as  if  to  carry  it  to  its 
highest  point  alliances  were  sought  with  foreign 
princes  and  princesses.  Thus  Vladimir  Mono- 
makh,  himself  the  son  of  a  Greek  princess,  took 
as  his  first  wife  the  daughter  of  Harold,  who  met 
his  death  at  Hastings.  Vladimir's  son  married  a 
Swedish  princess  ;  one  of  his  daughters  wedded 
the  king  of  Poland,  another  was  united  to  the 
king  of  Hungar^.     Perhaps  the  most  striking 


114  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

of  all  proofs  of  the  honor  in  which  the  female 
sex  was  held  in  the  first  period  of  Slav  history- 
is  afforded  by  the  admission  of  a  woman  to  the 
dignities  and  responsibilities  of  government. 
The  elevation  of  Olga  to  the  throne  of  the 
princes  was  one  of  the  last  expressions  of  the 
freedom  of  the  early  period.  And  as  the  com- 
plete exclusion  of  women  from  participation  in 
Russian  sovereignty  through  nearly  eight  cen- 
turies characterizes  and  corresponds  with  the 
political  humiliations  and  social  debasements  of 
the  second  period,  so  will  the  third  period  be 
found  one  in  which,  while  the  nation  at  large 
reaps  the  benefits  of  Western  culture,  Russian 
women  in  one  station  of  life  shake  off  domestic 
tyranny,  and  in  another  obtain  admission  to  the 
highest  position  in  the  state. 

For  the  cause  of  this  suppression  of  women 
for  nearly  eight  centuries  we  must  look  to  the 
same  set  of  influences  as  those  which  weakened 
the  free  traits  of  the  individual  and  national 
life.  Of  the  two,  Byzantine  ecclesiasticism  was 
by  far  the  more  important  in  its  influence,  and 
the  more  disastrous  in  its  effects.  Scarcely  have 
the  priests  of  the  Greek  Church  begun  their 
teaching  of  the  new  faith  to  a  not  over-willing 
people  when  changes  begin  to  unsettle  the  posi- 
tion of  woman,  and  burden  her  relationship  to 
the  family  and  community  with  a  sense  of  in- 


DOMESTIC  SLAVERY.  115 

feriority.  First,  we  see  her  confined  to  a  partic- 
ular part  of  the  domicile,  secluded  in  the 
terem,  —  an  apartment  unknown  to  the  early- 
Slavs,  —  ostensibly  to  keep  her  out  of  danger  and 
properly  employed,  but  really  to  give  validity 
to  the  new  conception  of  her  subordination  to 
the  master,  or  despot,  of  the  household.  When 
the  freedom  of  the  tribe,  the  commune,  and  the 
individual  had  disappeared,  what  particular  or 
plausible  argument  could  the  wife  offer  in  de- 
fense of  her  own  meagre  liberties  ?  If  the  new 
state  was  to  be  governed  autocratically,  what 
could  be  more  justifiable  than  to  rest  the  rule  of 
the  household  upon  the  same  foundation?  If 
absolutism  was  right  in  the  state,  what  could 
make  it  wrong  in  the  family?  And  so,  her 
status  falling,  pari  passu,  with  the  natural  ex- 
tension of  the  ecclesiastical  policy,  the  Russian 
woman  at  last  became  the  slave  of  her  Christian 
husband  ;  as  much  his  chattel  as  if,  under  an 
earlier  regime,  she  had  been  purchased  at  mar- 
ket or  captured  in  war.  The  polygamous  union 
seems  to  have  been  one  of  a  voluntary  character, 
terminable  at  pleasure.  The  monogamous  mar- 
riage was  so  ingeniously  contrived  as  to  be  at 
once  odious  by  fullness  of  despotism  and  indis- 
soluble by  force  of  ceremony.  The  husband 
could  release  himself  from  its  bond  by  killing 
his  wife ;  the  wife  could  become  free  only  by 


116  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

succumbing  to  the  brutalities  of  her  husband. 
Whether  or  not  the  priests  saw  in  the  Slav  wo- 
man of  this  period  something  hostile  to  the 
unified  state  with  its  monarch  an  autocrat,  thus 
viewing  her  with  a  suspicion  which  modern 
rather  than  old  Russian  history  would  seem  to 
justify,  —  the  fact  remains  that,  in  marking  out 
for  her  a  position  full  of  humiliating  restrictions, 
the  Greek  Church  was  really  furnishing  to  pos- 
terity a  striking  testimony  to  her  influence  in 
the  family  and  in  society. 

Elaborate  measures  were  taken  to  counteract 
that  influence.  Scarcely  had  she  emerged  from 
swaddling-clothes  before  her  conduct  became 
an  object  of  ecclesiastical  solicitude.  Boys  and 
girls  of  the  most  tender  age  were  not  allowed 
to  play  together.  The  didactic  writer  Possosh- 
kov  enjoins  the  father  who  happens  to  witness 
any  playful  conduct  on  the  part  of  his  son  to- 
wards a  girl  to  take  a  cudgel  and  break  the 
lad's  ribs  with  it.  All  social  intercourse  be- 
tween young  men  and  young  women  was  for- 
bidden. Even  to  look  at  a  woman  was  a  sin. 
Indeed,  according  to  the  teachings  of  the  church, 
woman  was  not  made  to  be  looked  at.  The 
priests  treated  her  as  a  mysterious  subject,  full 
of  evil  potencies,  safety  from  which  could  only 
be  secured  by  constant  watchfulness.  Hence 
both  church  and   state   favored   the   policy  of 


DOMESTIC  SLAVERY.  117 

seclusion.  On  the  one  hand,  the  terem  was  con- 
trived for  the  reception  of  this  dangerous  ele- 
ment; on  the  other,  the  church  offered  it  ac- 
commodation in  the  cloister. 

Comparatively  few  came  under  monastic  dis- 
cipline, and  gave  their  lives  to  prayer,  disci- 
pline, charity.  But  the  mass  of  Russian  women 
clung  to  the  duties  and  debasements  of  secular 
existence  with  a  heroism  which  is  beyond 
praise.  What  they  gained  from  ecclesiasticism 
as  children  we  have  already  seen.  As  wives, 
their  sole  business  was  to  respond  to  the  ca- 
prices of  their  husbands,  to  keep  house,  and 
look  after  food  and  clothing  and  servants.  They 
were  to  bear  children,  but  not  to  educate  them. 
Wives  were  expected  to  remain  at  home  and  to 
know  nothing  save  their  household  work.  Kos- 
tomarov,  writing  of  social  life  in  the  sixteenth 
and  seventeenth  centuries,  says  that  "  women 
were  generally  regarded  as  being  of  a  lower 
order  of  beings  than  men,  and  in  certain  re- 
spects even  unclean,  since  they  were  not  al- 
lowed to  kill  animals  for  the  table,  it  being 
supposed  that,  were  they  to  do  so,  the  meat 
would  be  unpalatable.  On  certain  days  a 
woman  believed  herself  to  be  unworthy  to  eat 
in  company.  .  .  .  Having  become  a  wife  (in  ac- 
cordance with  the  arrangements  of  the  parents), 
she  never  dared  to  go  from  home  without  the 


118  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

permission  of  her  husband  ;  even  for  her  to  at- 
tend church  his  consent  had  to  be  obtained. 
Many  women  believed  they  were  only  born  to 
be  beaten,  and  that  marital  love  was  best  ex- 
pressed with  the  lash.  Men  often  killed  their 
wives,  and  went  unpunished  merely  because 
the  death  was  slow  instead  of  sudden.  When 
women  poisoned  their  husbands,  as  in  some 
rare  cases  they  did,  the  culprits  were  buried 
in  the  ground  up  to  the  shoulders,  and  left  to 
starve." x 

The  "  Domostro'i  "  lays  stress  on  the  salutary 
effects  of  wife  -  beating.  It  talks  of  the  lash 
much  as  a  doctor  discusses  doses  of  medicine. 
If  the  fault  is  great,  the  punishment  must  be 
proportionately  severe.  If  the  peccant  wife 
shows  no  sign  of  repentance,  she  must- be  lashed 
still  more  vigorously.  The  husband  is  instructed 
to  hold  his  victim  by  the  hands,  —  as  much  to 
render  her  helpless  as  to  facilitate  the  beating. 
And  yet,  like  the  Spanish  inquisitor,  the  hus- 
band must  be  a  model  of  equable  temper. 
There  must  be  no  anger,  says  Priest  Sylvester, 
in  the  chastisement.  The  use  of  wooden  or 
iron  instruments  was  prohibited,  nor  were  blows 
to  be  given  in  the  face,  or  about  the  region  of 
the  heart,  in  order  that  blindness  might  be 
avoided  and  bones  be  kept  intact ! !     Thus  a 

1  Ocherk,  etc.    Kostomarov. 


DOMESTIC  SLAVERY.  119 

Russian  husband  might  torture  his  wife  to  the 
verge  of  death,  provided  he  did  nothing  to  vis- 
ibly incapacitate  her  for  the  discharge  of  her 
household  duties.  More  appalling  still  is  the 
reflection  that  this  domestic  brutality  was  not 
only  licensed,  but  actually  enjoined  by  the 
church  as  a  religious  duty.  Somewhere,  M. 
Renan  has  written  that  Christianity  was  the  re- 
ligion of  women,  —  that  is,  a  religion  created  by 
their  ideals,  supported  by  their  moral  qualities ; 
while  Islamism  he  described  as  a  religion  of  men. 
What  strength  could  be  expected  to  flow  from 
the  approval  of  Russian  women  to  a  faith  which 
handed  them  over  to  cold-blooded  outrage  and 
debasement ;  which  bade  them  bring  forth  chil- 
dren to  tyrants,  in  order,  as  in  the  Buddhist 
story,  that  their  torments  might  be  repeated  in 
an  endless  succession  of  re-births  ?  It  is  quite 
true  that  many  Russian  women  were  devoted 
adherents  of  the  Greek  Church  ;  quite  probable 
that,  in  some  cases,  the  more  a  woman  suffered 
from  Byzantinism,  the  more  faithfully  ortho- 
dox did  she  become.  But  it  is  equally  true 
that  many  women  who  were  beaten  by  their 
husbands  continued  to  love  their  tormentors, 
notwithstanding  ;  and  at  any  rate  probable  — 
even  if  it  were  not  established  by  the  old  an- 
nals—  that  the  more  some  wives  were  thrashed, 
the  better  they  liked  the  authors  of  their  chas- 


120  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

tisement.  Love  is  a  mysterious  thing,  and  may- 
bear  a  heavy  burden  of  cruelty  without  break- 
ing down  ;  and  so  a  religion  does  not  fail  of 
devotees  merely  because  the  way  along  which  it 
has  come  happens  to  be  moist  with  blood,  or 
strewn  with  bones. 

Without  the  good-will  of  her  husband,  the 
wife  was  in  a  position  very  similar  to  that  of  a 
political  offender  who,  in  Russia,  at  the  present 
day,  finds  himself  without  a  passsport.  If  de- 
livered for  a  few  brief  moments  from  the  terem, 
—  of  which,  by  the  way,  her  husband  kept  the 
key,  —  she  was  expected  to  carry  abroad  the 
humble  demeanor  exacted  from  her  at  home. 
If  asked  a  question  relating  to  other  than  house- 
hold subjects,  it  was  her  duty  to  reply  that  she 
"  did  not  know."  This  might  be  a  lie,  but  she^. 
was  bound  to  obey  her  husband  and  the  "  Do- 
mostroi."  To  the  former  it  was  her  business 
to  carry  everything  heard  by  her  out  of  doors. 
She  was  forbidden  to  drink  anything  stronger 
than  kvass,1  had  no  power  of  making  bargains 
with  peddlers,  and  was  required  to  have  work  in 
her  hand  continually.  After  marriage  it  was 
considered  dishonoring  for  a  woman  to  show  her 
hair,  even  to  her  relatives.  The  plait,  or  volos- 
nik,  the  sign  of  virginity,  now  disappeared  in 
another  form  of  coiffure.     In  Novgorod  it  was 

1  A  non-intoxicating  herb  drink. 


DOMESTIC  SLAVERY.  121 

the  custom  for  women  to  cut  off  their  flowing 
tresses  as  a  preliminary  to  the  state  of  wedlock. 
How  distasteful  it  must  have  been  to  the  Greek 
Church  for  a  woman  to  insist  on  being  attrac- 
tive after  as  well  as  before  marriage  can  be 
easily  imagined. 

A  reasonable  presumption  is  that  marital  beat- 
ings diminished  in  number  and  severity  as  a 
woman  passed  from  the  lower  to  the  higher 
walks  of  life.  Seclusion,  on  the  other  hand,  in- 
creased in  closeness  with  rank.  Upon  the  Tsar- 
itsa  and  Tsarevna  the  strictest  watch  was  main- 
tained. The  princesses  were  kept  in  rooms  as 
far  as  possible  from  any  thoroughfare.  It  was 
said  by  a  foreign  ambassador,  writing  from 
Moscow  in  1663,  that  out  of  a  thousand  court- 
iers, hardly  one  could  boast  that  he  had  seen 
the  Tsaritsa,  or  any  of  the  daughters  or  sisters 
of  the  Tsar.  It  was  even  dangerous  for  any 
one  to  see  these  high  personages  accidentally. 
The  story  is  told,  for  example,  how  Dashkov 
and  Buturlin,  turning  a  corner  suddenly  in  one 
of  the  palace  courts,  met  the  carriage  of  the 
Tsaritsa  Natalia  as  the  empress  was  on  her  way 
to  prayers.  Although  the  rencontre  was  purely 
accidental,  the  two  were  arrested  and  detained 
in  custody  for  several  days  until  the  affair  had 
been  "cleared  up."  Reutenfels  states  that 
when  Natalia  Krilovna  ventured  on  one  occasion 


122  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

to  open  the  little  window  of  her  carriage,  the 
departure  from  established  rules  of  propriety- 
created  a  great  sensation.  Even  physicians 
came  under  the  operation  of  these  rules,  since 
pulses  had  to  be  felt  and  other  analogous  tactual 
processes  gone  through  with  the  face  of  the 
royal  patient  hidden  by  a  veil,  and  her  cutaneous 
membrane  protected  from  the  vulgar  touch  by 
a  thin  gauze ! 

Herberstein,  German  ambassador  to  the 
court  of  Vassily  Ivanovich,  writes  naturally- 
enough  that  "  love  between  those  who  are  mar- 
ried is  for  the  most  part  lukewarm,  especially 
among  the  nobles,  because  they  marry  girls 
they  have  never  seen  before,  and  having  engaged 
in  the  service  of  princes  they  are  compelled  to 
desert  them.  .  .  .  The  condition  of  the  women 
is  most  miserable*,  for  they  consider  no  woman 
virtuous  unless  she  live  shut  up  at  home  and  be 
so  closely  guarded  that  she  go  out  nowhere. 
They  give  a  woman  little  credit  for  modesty,  if 
she  be  seen  by  strangers  or  people  out-of-doors. 
Shut  up  at  home  the  women  do  nothing  but 
spin  and  sew,  and  have  literally  no  authority  or 
influence  in  the  house.  Whatever  is  strangled 
by  the  hands  of  a  woman,  whether  it  be  a  fowl 
or  any  other  kind  of  animal,  they  abominate  as 
unclean.  The  wives,  however,  of  the  poorer 
classes,  do  the  household  work  and  cook,  but  if 


DOMESTIC  SLAVERY.  123 

their  husbands  and  manservants  are  away,  they 
stand  at  the  door  holding  the  fowl  and  ask  men 
who  pass  to  kill  it  for  them.  They  are  very 
seldom  admitted  into  the  churches,  and  still  less 
frequently  to  friendly  meetings,  unless  they  be 
very  old  and  free  from  suspicion.  But  on  cer- 
tain holidays  men  allow  their  wives  and  daugh- 
ters, as  a  special  gratification,  to  meet  in  a  very 
pleasant  meadow."  .  .  . 

So  much  for  the  women  of  Moscow  and  the 
remarkable  condescension  of  their  husbands. 
The  general  effect  of  such  a  policy  as  that  de- 
scribed was  to  reduce  women  to  a  state  of  the 
most  abject  and  helpless  ignorance.  Kotoshchin, 
mentioning  that  it  was  not  the  custom  to  teach 
them  anything  in  secular  branches  of  knowledge, 
speaks  of  their  general  incapacity  to  read  and 
write,  and  describes  their  manners  as  shy  and 
awkward,  owing  to  their  seclusion  and  the  habit 
of  permitting  them  to  see  only  their  relatives. 
It  was  probably  because  of  these  superficial  ap- 
pearances —  the  natural  results  of  a  treatment 
at  once  absurd  and  outrageous  —  that  women 
came  to  be  so  mercilessly  dealt  with  in  the  pro- 
verbial philosophy  of  the  people.  Hence  such 
sayings  as,  "  A  woman's  hair  is  long,  but  her 
understanding  is  short;"  "  The  wisdom  of  the 
woman  is  like  the  wildness  of  the  animals ; " 
"  That  which  the  devil  cannot  do  woman  can 


124  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

do ; "  "  As  a  horse  by  the  bridle,  so  a  woman 
must  be  directed  by  menaces  ; "  "A  bad  woman 
at  home  is  worse  than  a  devil  in  the  wood; "  "  It 
is  better  to  irritate  a  dog  than  a  woman ; " 
"  Compared  with  a  quarrelsome  woman,  the  devil 
is  a  saint."  In  a  didactic  composition  of  the 
seventeenth  century  woman  is  described  as  "  van- 
ity itself ;  "  "a  storm  in  the  house  ;  "  "a  flood 
that  swallows  everything  ;  "  "a  continually  fly- 
ing arrow  ;  "  "  a  serpent  nursed  in  the  bosom  ;  " 
"  a  spear  penetrating  the  heart,"  etc.  Another 
writer  of  the  same  period  warns  men  to  "fly 
from  the  beauty  of  woman  as  Noah  saved  him- 
self from  the  flood,  or  Lot  escaped  from  Sodom 
and  Gomorrah,"  adding  that  "  as  Eve  did  wrong, 
so  the  whole  race  of  women  became  sinful,  and 
the  cause  of  all  evil."  It  is  worth  while  noting 
that  the  word  for  "  to  marry "  in  Russian  — 
zhenit a  —  means,  in  a  figurative  sense,  "  to  de- 
ceive "  or  "  cause  loss." 

How  Russian  marriages  could  be  expected  to 
turn  out  happily  in  the  monastic  period  is  a 
mystery.  They  were  entirely  arranged  by  the 
parents,  the  wedded  couple  being  excluded 
from  all  intercourse  and  acquaintance  with  each 
other  before  the  ceremony.  Nor  was  the  wife 
always  prepared  for  the  household  functions 
within  which  the  church  restricted  her  activity. 

1  Said  of  the  husband,  that  is,  ducere  as  opposed  to  nubere. 


DOMESTIC  SLAVERY.  125 

"  Many  girls,"  wrote  the  Servian  Krishanich,  at 
his  place  of  banishment  in  Tobolsk,  "  marry  so 
young  that  they  do  not  know  what  a  housewife 
ought  to  understand.  And  many  of  the  mothers 
of  these  girls  also  understand  nothing  of  domes- 
tic work."  So  impressed  was  Krishanich  with 
these  feminine  defects  that  he  proposed  the 
foundation  of  schools,  wherein  women  should  be 
taught  spinning,  weaving,  sewing,  washing,  the 
salting  of  fish,  brewing,  baking,  and  the  making 
of  drinks,  adding  the  suggestion  that,  before 
being  allowed  to  marry,  each  young  woman 
should  produce  a  certificate  of  her  competency 
in  the  various  branches  of  household  work. 

In  1693  the  patriarch  Adrian  issued  an  order 
admonishing  parents  not  to  marry  children 
against  their  will.  This  document  marks  the 
relaxing  hold  of  monasticism  upon  the  family, 
and  forms  one  of  the  signs  of  those  western  in- 
fluences which  were  soon  to  usher  in  the  third 
and  modern  period  of  Russian  history.  What 
the  reaction  was  from  the  domestic  tyranny  I 
have  endeavored  to  sketch  ;  how  far  it  gave 
free  play  to  the  intellectual  and  social  forces 
which  had  been  suppressed  during  so  many  cen- 
turies ;  and  whether  the  recoil  was  slow  and 
healthy  or  quick  and  dangerous  in  the  propor- 
tion of  its  suddenness,  —  these  questions  must 
be  left  for  answer  to  succeeding  chapters. 


THE  RELIGIOUS  PROTEST. 


THAT  sooner  or  later  the  people  should  pro- 
test against  a  system  which  debased  the  individ- 
ual in  order  to  elevate  the  autocrat,  that  made 
land-owners  proprietors  of  serfs,  turned  princes 
into  tax-gatherers,  and  gave  to  every  domicile 
a  tyrant  and  a  slave,  —  this  was  inevitable.  But 
that  the  first  protest  of  the  kind  should  have 
come  at  a  comparatively  early  period  in  Russian 
history, — a  period  nearly  two  centuries  before 
the  epoch  at  which  the  intellectual  self-con- 
sciousness of  the  educated  classes  in  Russia  can 
be  said  to  have  been  fully  awakened,  —  this 
was  partly  due  to  certain  special  circumstances 
of  the  national  life.  Glancing  back  for  a  mo- 
ment in  the  line  along  which  our  survey  has 
extended,  we  shall  see  that  Russian  development 
has  been  a  double  process,  involving  singular 
analogies  and  contradictions ;  since,  while  the 
state  idea  has  seen  its  highest  expression  in  the 
struggle  for  unity,  the  masses  have  found  their 
interest  in  keeping  alive  the  movement  of  ex- 
tension.    Migratory  habits,  enterprise,  the  nat- 


THE  RELIGIOUS  PROTEST.  127 

ural  temptations  of  fertile  land  and  an  open 
country,  —  all  these  stimulated  the  colonization 
of  European  Russia.  But  to  these  inducements 
we  must  add  the  element  of  coercion.  The  ex- 
actions of  the  tax-gatherer,  the  numberless  tyr- 
annies of  the  new  state,  drove  the  Russian 
afield  into  territories  where  he  hoped  to  breathe 
more  freely.  And  while  this  expanding  move- 
ment did  not  perceptibly  hinder  the  process  of 
national  unification,  it  sharpened  the  Slav  intel- 
lect for  coming  struggles  with  absolute  power. 
The  reflective  effects  of  colonization  are  well 
marked  and  beyond  dispute.  The  process  is 
the  same,  the  results  are  the  same,  whether  the 
colonizers  are  from  a  young  stock  or  go  forth  to 
their  work  from  a  civilization  settled  and  old. 
Whenever  bodies  of  men,  crossing  country  or 
sea,  enter  a  new  environment,  —  a  territory  in 
which  new  varieties  of  food,  new  air,  water,  cli- 
mate, and  scenery  are  encountered,  —  and  there 
settle  down  to  the  development  of  social  forms 
and  institutions,  to  the  creation  of  a  civilization 
in  harmony  with  the  surroundings,  the  differ- 
entiation of  the  human  beings  who  engage  in  the 
work  from  the  stock  out  of  which  they  sprang 
is  inevitable.  The  changes  that  follow  are  still 
more  marked  when  the  process  of  colonization 
exacts  from  the  colonizer  circumspection,  bold- 
ness, enterprise,  activity,  and  the  power  of  en- 


128  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

during  hardships  and  fatigue.  Where  these 
qualities  are  called  forth,  the  pioneer  grows 
realistic  in  his  views  of  life  and  in  the  concep- 
tions by  which  his  actions  are  regulated.  The 
sentimental  and  religious  tendencies  may  still 
remain  ;  may  even  be  stimulated,  by  contact 
with  natural  forces,  into  a  hypersensuous  con- 
dition ;  but  the  mind  as  a  whole  assumes  that 
condition  which  is  usually  called  "practical." 
The  luxurious  wastes  and  ornaments  of  old 
civilizations  are  discarded  and  not  missed ;  men 
learn  to  conserve  their  energies  and  put  forth 
just  the  amount  of  force  needed  and  no  more. 
The  colonizer  becomes  a  political  economist  and 
a  thinker ;  idle  habits  disappear ;  spare  time  is 
utilized ;  hours  formerly  spent  in  hobbies  now 
slip  away  in  inventions.  The  immediate  inter- 
est or  necessity  is  uppermost  in  all  minds.  To 
all  actions,  planned  or  completed,  men  apply 
the  cui  bono  test.  Discussion  is  brief,  speech 
laconic,  the  deed  following  the  decision  with 
especial  swiftness.  The  new  conditions  of  colo- 
nization also  give  a  particular  impulse  to  the 
development  of  individuality.  Relieved  from 
the  crystallized  forms  of  the  older  civilization, 
free  from  the  tyranny  of  its  standards  and  pre- 
cedents, not  controlled,  as  one  inevitably  feels 
in  cities  like  London  or  Paris,  by  the  spirit 
of  their  criticisms,  by  the  utterances  of  their 


THE?  RELIGIOUS  PROTEST.  129 

teachers,  by  their  arts  and  sciences,  their  litera- 
ture, their  religion,  or  their  antiquity,  —  the 
colonizers  begin  life  afresh  in  their  own  way, 
unshackled,  unrestricted,  themselves  the  prece- 
dents of  the  new  society  which  is  to  arise  out 
of  their  labors.  With  everything  as  yet  vague 
and  in  the  formative  state,  with  a  field  of  opera- 
tions before  it  probably  vast,  individuality  sees 
its  opportunity  and  steps  forward.  In  religion, 
new  churches  spring  into  existence  ;  in  philoso- 
phy, should  utilitarianism  not  exclude  it,  schools 
arise.  The  man  of  ability  is  immediately  sur- 
rounded by  followers ;  the  man  of  remarkable 
gifts  carries  off  the  rewards  of  genius  itself. 
Society,  in  fine,  is  led  by  individuals  rather  than 
by  coteries,  by  ideas  rather  than  by  maxims,  by 
originality  rather  than  by  authority,  and  by 
reasons  rather  than  by  rules. 

It  was  changes  analagous  to  these  —  like  them 
in  kind,  if  not  in  degree  —  that  colonization 
brought  to  the  hardy  and  adventurous  bands  of 
Slavs  who,  pushing  out  from  nuclei  like  Kiev 
and  Novgorod,  gradually  spread  all  over  Euro- 
pean Russia,  and  were  not  even  kept  back  by 
the  Ural  range,  but  surmounting  it  ceased  not 
to  advance  until  the  rule  of  the  Tsars  extended 
in  an  unbroken  line  from  the  Baltic  Sea  to  the 
Pacific  Ocean.  The  work  done,  the  difficulties 
surmounted  in  this  movement  were  of   an  es- 

9 


130  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

pecially  trying  and  arduous  kind.  Rivers  had 
to  be  traversed,  forests  cut  down,  wild  places 
made  habitable.  Not  always  could  the  pioneers 
give  each  other  help,  such  was  the  insignificant 
relation  their  numbers  bore  to  the  vastness  of 
the  country.  And  as  on  the  one  hand  they 
were  exposed  to  the  severities  of  a  rigorous  cli- 
mate, so  on  the  other  they  had  to  face  the  Mon- 
gol or  Finnish  foe,  ever  on  the  alert  to  notice 
their  coming  and  retard  their  advance.  The 
rough  and  ready  work  of  this  new  life  was  an 
education  in  itself.  It  taught  them  self-reliance. 
It  quickened  their  intellectual  activities.  It 
raised  them  out  of  a  fatalism  that  was  ready  to 
accept  everything  simply  because  it  was,  into 
an  incredulity  that  questioned  on  principle  and 
would  not  be  put  off  with  replies  that  were 
mere  plausibilities.  It  quickened  the  sentiment 
of  individuality,  and  developed  anew  the  old 
spirit  of  resistance  to  usurpations  of  power,  to 
suppressions  of  the  popular  liberties,  to  ne- 
gations of  private  right  and  personal  worth, 
whether  carried  out  in  the  interests  of  state 
politics,  undertaken  on  behalf  of  religion,  or  per- 
petrated to  secure  the  ends  of  a  coalition  at  once 
priestly  and  regal  and  disastrous. 

And  when  this  first  silent  protest  ripened  the 
Greek  Church  seemed  peculiarly  open  to  its  as- 
saults.     That   institution   expressed  a  double 


THE  RELIGIOUS  PROTEST.  131 

authority.  The  source  of  those  great  funda- 
mental changes  which  had  banished  popular 
government  from  Russia,  it  became  the  sup- 
porter, not  only  of  its  own  edicts,  but  also  of 
the  exactions  of  the  civil  power.  The  Tatars 
were  among  the  first  to  recognize  its  utility  as 
an  instrument  of  state,  and  their  politic  compro- 
mise with  it,  falsely  dubbed  "  tolerance,"  formed 
no  unimportant  part  of  the  legacy  which  fell  to 
Russia  from  the  Mongol  domination.  Year  by 
year  the  union  drew  closer,  until  at  last  the  ten- 
sion between  the  awakened  realism  of  the  peo- 
ple and  the  encroachments  of  the  civil  power 
grew  into  open  and  serious  rupture. 

The  real  meaning  of  the  outbreak  was  as 
completely  hidden  from  the  people  who  took 
part  in  it  as  its  significance  has  been  veiled 
from  posterity  by  the  historians.  It  began  in 
a  trivial  and  childish  controversy.  About  five 
centuries  after  Russia's  conversion  to  Chris- 
tianity, errors  began  to  be  discovered  in  the 
ritual  and  service  books  of  the  church.  These 
had  arisen  in  several  ways :  partly  owing  to 
the  practice  of  copying  texts  with  the  pen, 
partly  to  the  blunders  of  inefficient  copyists, 
partly  to  the  ignorance  and  incompetence  of 
the  priests  themselves.  And  as  the  variations 
went  on  multiplying  until  it  might  almost  have 
been  said  that  there  were  no  two  Bibles  or  mass 


132  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

books  alike  in  all  Russia,  the  Tsar  Vassily  Ivan- 
ovich  felt  himself  constrained  to  cause  a  colla- 
tion of  the  various  texts  with  the  originals,  and 
ordered  Maximus,  a  learned  monk  of  the  famous 
monastery  of  Mount  Athos,  to  proceed  with 
the  work.  But  the  proposed  revision  was  to 
meet  with  a  vigorous  and  determined  opposi- 
tion. A  powerful  party  took  sides  against 
Maximus,  and  an  ecclesiastical  court,  rege  vo- 
lente^  banished  the  learned  monk  to  a  convent. 
The  reform  agitation  went  on.  In  1617,  the 
Tsar  Michael  Fiodorovich  had  the  texts  col- 
lated anew.  Again  arose  the  storm,  and 
Dionysius,  the  learned  archimandrite  who  had 
undertaken  to  succeed  Maximus,  was  sent  to 
expiate  his  revising  zeal  in  prison.  At  last  the 
powerful  patriarch  Nikon  threw  himself  into 
the  breach.  With  the  sanction  of  the  Tsar 
Alexis  Michailovich,  the  work  was  now  prose- 
cuted with  unexampled  energy  and  determina- 
tion. Nikon  secured  the  cooperation  of  the 
oecumenical  patriarchs  of  the  Greek  Church  and 
the  monks  of  Mount  Athos.  No  fewer  than 
seven  hundred  ancient  manuscripts  were  brought 
to  Russia  in  order  to  facilitate  the  correction  of 
the  faulty  texts.  In  1655  the  patriarch  of  An- 
tioch,  the  Servian  patriarch,  and  the  metropoli- 
tan of  Moldavia  entered  Russia,  to  offer  their 
assistance.     Finally  Nikon  completed  his  task, 


THE  RELIGIOUS  PROTEST.  133 

and  by  a  great  ecclesiastical  council,  gathered 
at  Moscow,  all  who  refused  to  abide  by  the  re- 
sult were  solemnly  excommunicated.  At  last 
the  reformers  had  triumphed.  But  the  victory 
was  won  in  the  teeth  of  an  opposition  so  power- 
ful and  widespread  that  it  presented  the  char- 
acter of  a  national  movement  rather  than  of  a 
mere  party  of  resistance  within  or  without  the 
church.  It  was  gained  under  such  humiliating 
conditions  of  compromise  that  while  the  Rus- 
sian ecclesiastics  eagerly  accepted  the  reforms, 
they  deemed  it  politic  to  throw  the  reformer 
into  prison.  Nothing  could  better  illustrate  the 
imminence  of  a  grave  public  danger  than  this 
very  decision  which,  while  it  affirmed  the  excel- 
lence and  necessity  of  Nikon's  work,  dubbed 
Nikon  a  criminal  for  carrying  it  to  successful 
completion.  Nor  could  anything  better  show 
the  deeprooted  and  determined  character  of  the 
popular  protest  than  the  raslcol,  the  dissent 
and  heresy  which  sprang  from  the  anathema  of 
the  13th  of  May,  1667. 

The  details  of  the  controversy  have  puerile 
and  ridiculous  elements  in  almost  equal  propor- 
tion. The  whole  question  turned  on  whether 
in  crossing  one's-self  the  index  and  middle 
finger,  or  the  three  fingers,  of  the  right  hand 
should  be  used  ;  whether  the  word  Jesus  should 
be  spelled  "  Iissus"  or  "  Issus,"  or  whether  in  a 


134  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

certain  service  "  Hallelujah  "  should  be  sung 
twice  or  three  times.  But  does  any  reader  of 
mine  suppose  for  one  moment  that  out  of  such 
absurd  elements  as  these,  representing  the  two 
extremes  of  triviality  and  absurdity  combined, 
a  movement  could  arise  fateful  for  all  the  subse- 
quent course  of  Russian  history,  as  serious  for 
the  fortunes  of  the  Greek  Church  as  if  half  its 
followers  had  wandered  away  in  some  great 
hegira,  and  scarcely  less  grave  for  social  and 
political  solidarity  in  Russia  than  would  have 
been  the  disruption  of  the  planet  itself  ?  The 
issues  were  not  trivial.  They  were  tremendous. 
Just  as  beneath  the  light  play  of  human  fancy 
and  the  fleeting  reign  of  passion  nature  con- 
ceals some  of  the  mightiest  of  her  processes,  so 
below  this  petty  squabble  over  the  spelling  of 
a  name  and  the  raising  of  a  finger  lay  hidden 
the  elements  of  a  vast  convulsion.  The  reforms 
of  Nikon,  the  ecclesiasts  who  sought  to  enforce 
them,  the  Greek  Church  that  forged  the  anath- 
ema ;  all  these  represented  the  state  and  its 
complex  authority.  The  Old  Believers  at  first, 
afterwards  the  dissenters  and  heretics,  repre- 
sented the  people.  The  outbreak  had  long 
been  preparing.  A  cumulative  irritation,  a 
popular  spirit  of  resistance  growing  deeper  and 
wider  with  every  augmentation  of  state  su- 
premacy, at  last  enabled  the  most  trivial  of  con- 


THE  RELIGIOUS  PROTEST.  135 

troversies  to  array  the  rival  forces  against  each 
other. 

The  struggle  against  the  reforms  of  Nikon 
was  a  protest  against  authority  in  both  church 
and  state.  This  is  shown  all  through  the  his- 
tory of  the  raskoL  The  Old  Believers,  while 
strenuously  taking  their  stand  in  defense  of 
points  of  ritual,  showed  all  through  the  dispute 
a  more  or  less  vague  consciousness  of  the  politi-  i 
cal  character  of  the  struggle.  In  declaring  the 
Tsar  to  be  Antichrist,  and  declining  to  pray  for  i 
him,  they  aimed  a  blow  at  what  was  rapidly  / 
becoming  the  final  source  of  authority  in  the/ 
double  domain  of  religion  and  politics.  They  J 
made  many  attempts  to  provoke  the  civil  power 
into  reprisals.  At  Solovetsky,  a  monastery 
built  on  an  island  in  the  White  Sea,  the  pro- 
test assumed  the  character  of  an  insurrection. 
Converted  by  Old  Believers  banished  for  their 
obstinate  championship  of  the  popular  cause, 
the  Solovetsky  monks  took  sides  against  au- 
thority and  armed  themselves  for  resistance. 
Three  years  after  the  anathema  had  been  pro- 
nounced, we  see  the  Tsar's  troops  laying  siege 
to  this  centre  of  disaffection  in  the  far  north. 
The  defenders  reply  to  the  attack  with  a  hun- 
dred pieces  of  cannon,  and  for  a  period  incredi- 
bly long,  during  which  the  leadership  of  the 
beleaguering  forces  has  to  be  twice  changed, 


\S 


/ 


136  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

maintain  a  sturdy,  determined  and  effective 
resistance.  That  at  last  Solovetsky  fell  to 
treachery  in  no  way  dims  the  glory  of  its  de- 
fenders. And  the  brave  monks  earned  a  far 
too  terrible  reward  for  posterity  to  do  them  the 
injustice  of  supposing  that  for  seven  long  years 
they  held  out  against  the  imperial  forces  simply 
in  order  to  be  able  to  shout  "  Hallelujah " 
twice  instead  of  thrice  in  a  church  service,  or 
cross  themselves  with  two  fingers  instead  of 
three. 

/^%  That  the  spirit  of  revolt  was  abroad  is  shown 
by  contemporaneous  events  standing  apart  in 
their  origin  from  the  merely  religious  contro- 

w  versy.  Scarcely  a  year  had  elapsed  since  the 
excommunication  of  the  Old  Believers  when  a 
frightful  insurrection,  the  first  of  its  kind,  broke 
out  in  the  governments  of  the  Volga.  The 
serfs  revolted  against  their  masters,  Cossacks 
joined  each  other  in  armed  protest  against  the 
curtailment  of  the  privileges,  while  here  and 
there  Tatar,  Chud,  Mordv,  and  Cheremiss  rose 
against  the  Russian  domination.  At  the  head 
of  these  elements  of  insurrection  Stenka  Razin, 
the  famous  brigand,  swept  the  country  for  three 
years.  At  first  sight  the  bond  of  connection 
between  the  two  movements  seems  a  wholly 
general  one.  But  when  Stenka  Razin  falls 
into  the  hands  of  the  government,  we  see  a 


THE  RELIGIOUS  PROTEST.  137 

large  body  of  Cossacks,  probably  the  main  de- 
bris of  the  insurrection,  traverse  the  whole  of 
northern  Russia  by  forced  marches,  and  hasten 
to  reinforce  the  defenders  of  the  Solovetsky 
monastery.  By  one  writer  we  are  told  con- 
cerning this  movement  that  "  between  the  fa- 
natical monks  and  the  Cossacks  there  could 
scarcely  be  any  closer  point  of  contact  than  that 
they  all  crossed  themselves  with  two  fingers 
and  said  Issus  instead  of  Iissus."  The  proba- 
bilities, as  well  as  the  facts,  are  all  opposed  to  so 
superficial  a  theory.  The  point  of  contact  was 
wider,  not  closer.  The  insurrection  on  the 
Volga,  the  insurrection  at  Solovetsky,  were 
parts  of  a  general  revolt  against  authority,  of 
which  the  religious  controversy  and  the  prac- 
tice of  brigandage  formed  merely  the  outward 
shapes.  The  inextinguishable  energy  of  the 
revolt,  its  superiority  to  all  persecutions  and 
sentences,  the  endurance  of  its  martyrs,  and  the 
glory  cast  upon  their  memory  by"admiring  dis- 
ciples, all  bring  the  struggle  into  the  category 
of  Russian  political  movements.  Reading  of 
the  priest  Avakum  lying  for  punishment  in  an 
underground  dungeon  in  the  sixty-eighth  de- 
gree of  latitude,  suffering  all  hardships  undis- 
mayed, and  retaining  inviolate  his  undying 
faith  in  himself  and  his  cause,  one  naturally  re- 
verts to  modern  instances  of  political  expiation  ; 


/ 


138  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

and  when,  perusing  the  story  to  the  end,  we  see 
the  prisoner  not  only  carrying  on  a  propaganda 
\/-  in  chains,  but  converting  his  guards  to  the  very 
views  for  which  it  is  their  duty  to  hold  him 
captive,  receiving  confidential  communications, 
holding  interviews  with  agents,  and  sending 
men  on  secret  missions  with  errands  which  he 
is  powerless  to  do  himself,  —  all  this  reads  like 
a  page  from  the  contemporary  annals  of  politi- 
cal offense  in  Russia. 

The  character  of  the  revolt  is  further  shown 
by  the  behavior  of  the  stryeltsy,1  a  sort  of  na- 
tional militia  stationed  at"  'Moscow,  who  were 
strongly  impregnated  with  the  views  of  the  Old 
Believers.  In  the  reign  of  Sophia  this  body, 
led  by  Prince  Khovansky,  broke  into  open  in- 
surrection. The  movement  was  suppressed 
with  great  severity,  but  no  punishment  could 
destroy  the  spirit  out  of  which  it  had  arisen. 
Again  and  again  the  stryeltsy  rose  against  the 
combined  tyranny  of  church  and  state,  again 
and  again  they  suffered  the  frightful  vengeance 
of  the  government,  until  at  last,  in  a  fashion 
characteristically  bloody  and  barbarous,  they 
were  completely  extirpated  by  Peter.  The 
stryeltsy  were  crushed,  but  not  the  revolt.  It 
went  on  widening  and  deepening  in  its  hold 
upon    the   awakening   national    consciousness. 

1  Literally  "archers." 


THE  RELIGIOUS  PROTEST.  139 

Once  more  it  was  destined  to  appear  in  the 
shape  of  armed  insurrection.     When  the  Cos-  h 

sack  Pugachev  rose  in  1770  as  Peter  III.,  it       \j 
was  upon  the  dissenters,  and  still  more  upon 
the  spirit  of  dissent,  that  he  depended  for  suc- 
cess.   Pugachev  fell  like  his  predecessor,  Stenka     \\~ 
Razin,  but  the  protest  against  authority  did  not  i?fl 
disappear.     From  "  old  "  belief  the  movement 
grew  to  dissent  and  heresy,  sects  sprang  out  of 
sects  and  multiplied  to  such  an  extent  that,  to- 
day, upwards  of  14,000,000     Russian  subjects 
of  the  Tsar  live  outside  the  Greek  Church  in  a 
state  of  protest  against  its  authority. 

Evidences  of  this  protest  the  various  be- 
liefs of  dissent  yield  in  abundance.  The  Bezpo- 
povtsy,  or  "  priestless  "  sect,  rejects  all  ecclesi- 
astical authority,  bestowing  upon  its  members 
the  right  to  baptize  and  perform  other  priestly 
functions.  So  far  does  this  class  of  dissenters 
carry  its  rejection  of  the  older  dogmas  that  it 
brands  marriages  within  the  pale  of  the  Ortho- 
dox Church  as  illegal.  The  Philippovtsy 1  are 
notorious  for  their  fanatical  hostility  to  the 
state.  The  Fedoseyevtsy 1  reject  the  ortho- 
dox sacraments  and  the  institution  of  the  priest- 
hood. The  Stranniki  (Wanderers)  regard  as 
an  essential  part  of  their  doctrine  the  suspen- 
sion of  all  relations  with  the  church  and  state,     v 

1  From  names  of  persons. 


140  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

The  Duchobortsy  (Warriors  of  the  Spirit)  teach 
the  negation  of  all  dogmas.  Under  Catherine 
II.  and  Paul  I.  their  attitude  was  one  of  pro- 
nounced hostility  to  the  state.  The  Strigolniki l 
direct  a  vigorous  polemic  against  the  church. 
The  Molokani  decline  to  acknowledge  Ortho- 
dox sources  of  authority.  The  members  of 
a  sect  known  as  the  Nyemolyaki  (Prayerless 
People)  imitate  the  Vosdykhantsy  (Sighers) 
in  their  opposition  to  Biblical  authority  and 
all  forms  of  religions  supplication.  In  this 
sect,  as  in  the  Molchalniki  (Silent)  who  re- 
ject the  Bible,  and  disbelieve  in  a  future  life, 
in  God,  and  in  religion,  we  see  the  negation 
of  authority  carried  to  its  utmost  possible  ex- 
treme. One  body  of  dissenters  selected  the 
Russian  passport  system  as  the  object  of  its 
special  hostility.  The  Stundists,  at  the  begin- 
ning of  their  existence  as  a  sect,  expressly  dis- 
avowed their  presumptive  subjection  to  the 
state. 

A  sort  of  atavism  is  noticeable  in  not  a  few 
of  the  sectarian  articles  of  faith.  We  see  the 
dissenters  falling  back,  unconsciously  enough, 
to  the  dogmas  —  religious,  social,  and  political 
—  of  the  early  Slav  life.  The  Obshcheye, 
(Commune)  taught  a  purely  communistic  doc- 
trine.    Every  mir  that  joined  it  was  forthwith 

1  From  a  proper  name. 


THE  RELIGIOUS  PROTEST.  141 

erected  into  a  communistical  unity,  the  members 
of  which  enjoyed  all  property  in  common  under 
the  administrative  direction  of  "  twelve  apos- 
tles "  regularly  chosen  from  the  people.  The 
Stundists  believe  in  and  inculcate  the  equal- 
ity of  all  men,  exacting  from  members  of  the 
sect  a  pronounced  fraternal  and  philanthropic 
activity.  Regarding  commerce  for  profit  as 
sinful,  they  trade  with  each  other  by  a  pro- 
cess of  simple  exchange.  Land,  water,  and 
cattle  they  regard  as  the  property  of  all  men 
in  common,  and  as  incapable  of  being  trans- 
ferred in  inheritance.  The  popular  character 
of  early  Slav  legislation  finds  an  echo  in  the 
Stundists'  practice  of  settling  all  disputes 
amongst  members  inter  se,  sometimes  with 
the  aid  of  an  elder  temporarily  invested  with 
judicial  functions.  In  the  principles  of  the 
Duchobortsy,  who  hold  that  all  men  are  equal, 
and  that  children  ought  to  have  the  same  con- 
sideration and  reverence  paid  to  them  as  that 
shown  to  adults  and  the  aged,  we  catch  a  glimpse 
of  old  Slav  life,  with  its  recognition  of  personal 
worth  and  individual  rights.  This  sect  disbe- 
lieves in  a  future  life,  asserting  the  post-mortem 
migration  of  the  soul  either  into  another  body,  or 
to  some  far-off  planet,  —  a  partial  reversion  to 
the  old  Slav  dogma  that  after  death  the  soul 
sometimes  journeyed  to  sun  or  moon.     In  the 


142  TEE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

case  of  not  a  few  of  the  fanatical  sects,  a  truly- 
pagan  scorn  of  marriage  has  wrought  not  a  little 
injury  to  morals  ;  at  times  some  of  the  hereti- 
cal dissenters  link  themselves  in  their  atavism 
with  the  erotic  orgies  of  the  ancient  world. 

The  motive  force  of  the  revolt  called  dissent 
was  Russian  individuality.  We  find  it  every- 
where awake.  Men  ready  to  lead,  groups  eager 
to  be  led,  are  ubiquitous.  The  raskol,  with  its 
one  "  split,"  gives  birth  to  a  thousand.  A  new 
idea  in  dissent,  a  shade  more  of  faith  or  incre- 
dulity in  any  given  direction,  the  discovery  of 
some  affirming  or  denying  text  in  the  New  Tes- 
tament, that  armory  of  arguments  for  sectarians, 
—  any  one  of  these  causes  was  amply  sufficient 
to  start  a  new  creed.  The  influence  of  individ- 
uality in  sect-forming  is  shown  by  the  large 
proportion  of  dissenting  systems  of  faith  that 
bear  the  names  of  their  founders.  Thus,  from 
the  activity  6f  Daniel  Vikulin  the  Danielites 
came  into  existence ;  that,  of  Theodosius  Vassi- 
liev  led  to  the  organization  of  the  Theodosians. 
In  the  former  sect  an  extraordinary  influence 
seems  to  have  been  exerted  by  a  certain  Prince 
Andrei  Dennisov  Myshetsky,  who  left  behind 
him  a  voluminous  literature  on  religious  sub- 
jects. The  same  passionate  enthusiasm  and 
restless  activity  in  the  cause  were  displayed  by 
Simeon,  his  brother  and  successor.    The  founder 


THE  RELIGIOUS  PROTEST.  143 

of  the  Philippovtsy,  one  Philipp,  caused  himself, 
with  thirty-eight  of  his  followers,  to  be  burnt 
alive.  A  case  is  also  narrated  in  which  seven- 
teen hundred  sectarians  set  fire  to  their  village 
and  voluntarily  perished  in  the  flames,  denoun- 
cing the  Church,  the  Tsar,  and  the  Orthodox 
priesthood.  In  the  commune  of  Starodub,  gov- 
ernment of  Vladimir,  one  Daniel  Philippovich 
gained  such  influence  over  his  followers  that 
they  consented  to  receive  a  series  of  "  ten  com- 
mandments "  at  his  hands.  The  peasant  Kon- 
drati  Selivanov,  regarded  by  his  Khlysty  fol- 
lowers as  the  incarnation  of  God,  but  at  last 
whipped  by  the  authorities  and  exiled  to  Sibe- 
ria, there  became  the  centre  of  interest  for  hun- 
dreds of  pilgrims  who  visited  the  leader  in  his 
banishment.  Over  the  spot  where  Selivanov 
suffered  the  punishment  of  the,  lash  they  built 
a  chapel ;  out  of~the  materials  of  his  life  they 
composed  a  legend  of ,  passion  anct  martyrdom 
not  unlike  those  of*  which,'  more  recently,  Rus- 
sian political  patriots  have  been  made  the  sub- 
ject. Gabriel  Simin,  the  Cossack  founder  of  the 
Nyemolyaki ;  Kapustin,  leader  of  the  Ducho- 
bortsy;  the  venerable  Abrossim,  chief  of  the 
Zhivniy  Pokoiniki  ;  Michael  Ratuzhny,  who 
originated  the  Stundist  movement;  these,  and 
many  others  whose  names  might  be  given,  were 
all  men  of  awakened  self-consciousness  and  pow- 


144  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

erful  individuality.  Nor  did  women  escape  this 
intellectual  re-birth.  At  times  their  enthusiasm 
ran  over  into  fanaticism.  The  Skoptsy  (Self- 
Mutilators)  had  amongst  their  members  in  Mor- 
shausk,  government  of  Tambov,  a  peasant 
.woman  named  Anna  Safonovna,  who  was  held 
in  great  veneration  as  a  prophetess.  Amongst 
the  Khlyst}'r  (Self-Whippers)  numerous  "moth- 
ers of  God"  and  prophetesses  have  made  their 
appearance.  The  absurdities  into  which  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  time  led  the  softer  sex  are 
further  shown  by  the  career  of  women  like  Aku- 
lina  Ivanovna,  who  led  a  thousand  followers  as 
the  "  Queen  of  Heaven,"  and  of  Anna  Roman- 
ovna,  who  wielded  influence  by  such  means  as 
ecstasies,  paroxysms,  and  prophecies. 


WESTERN  ENLIGHTENMENT. 


Thus  far  it  has  been  the  strange  and  abnor- 
mal lot  of  Russia  to  take  her  institutions  from 
the  foreigner,  aud  to  have  by  no  means  the 
most  excellent  of  them  foisted  upon  her  against 
her  will.  We  have  seen  how  she  first  called  in 
the  Varegs  to  teach  her  government  and  mili- 
tary organization  ;  how  her  next  appeal  was  to 
the  Greek  Church  to  instruct  her  in  ritual 
and  religion  ;  and  how,  from  numerous  foreign 
sources  and  at  various  times,  she  drew  laws, 
customs,  industries,  and  arts.  It  is  now  for  us 
to  look  upon  Russia  under  foreign  tutelage  in 
what  may  be  called  the  European  or  modern 
period  of  the  national  life.  This  nominally  be- 
gins with  the  reforms  of  Peter ;  really,  its  ad- 
vent antedates  that  monarch's  birth  by  several 
decades.  It  is  to  Poland,  the  vulnerable  side  of 
the  empire,  that  one  naturally  looks  for  the  ad- 
vanced-guards of  the  new  civilization.  The 
Poles  were  already  an  enlightened  race  and 
had  a  literature,  long  before  Russia  had  yet  pro- 
duced her  first  writer  of  note.  Under  Alexis  Mi- 
10 


146  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

chailovich,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  the  habit 
had  sprung  up  of  employing  Polish  teachers  in 
the  wealthier  Russian  families.  In  high  places, 
too,  this  same  Polish  influence  made  itself  felt. 
Western  manners  obtained  a  footing  at  the 
courts  of  the  Tsars.  Helen  Glinsky,  the  second 
wife  of  the  Tsar  Vassily,  and  mother  of  Ivan  the 
Terrible,  persuaded  her  husband  to  shave  his 
beard  nearly  two  centuries  before  Peter's  forci- 
ble introduction  of  the  practice.  The  influence 
of  Marina  in  promoting  western  culture  at  the 
court  of  Demetrius,  her  husband,  was  still  more 
marked.  But  when  we  come  to  the  reign  of 
Peter's  predecessor,  Russian  receptivity  for 
European  civilization  seems  to  enter  upon  a 
new  stage.  Alexis,  the  father  of  the  reformer, 
showed  in  himself  that  love  for  foreign  institu- 
tions which  he  transmitted  to  his  son.  A  trav- 
eler to  some  extent,  he  had  frequent  intercourse 
with  foreigners*  and  in  the  house  of  Matveiev 
met  the  most  cultured  men  and  women  of  the 
time.  Polish  and  Little  Russian  influence  was 
strong  during  the  reign  of  Alexis  ;  and  of  the 
immigrant  savants,  teachers,  and  theologians 
who  wielded  that  influence,  some  were  chosen 
to  teach  the  children  of  the  Tsar.  Stronger 
still,  perhaps,  as  a  Europeanizing  force,  was 
the  German  colony  at  Moscow,  representing  the 
best  enlightenment  of  the  time,  as  a.  sort  of 


WESTERN  ENLIGHTENMENT.  147 

entrepdt  through  which  a  select  few  were  per- 
mitted to  draw  otherwise  contraband  stores  of 
culture  and  idea  from  the  countries  of  west- 
ern Europe.  It  was  in  the  German  colony, 
moreover,  that  the  regulations  of  the  "  Domos- 
tro'i "  were  first  broken  through  in  regard  to 
woman,  who  there  took  her  proper  place  in  so- 
ciety. 

The  new  influences  proved  fatal  to  domestic 
tyranny.  Tanner  writes  in  1678  that  men  had 
begun  to  permit  their  wives  to  converse  with 
other  men  in  their  presence  !  What  it  cost  the 
priests  to  be  obliged  to  sanction  this  arrange- 
ment is  nowhere  stated.  A  little  later,  Korb 
reports  that  "  women  no  more  hide  themselves, 
but  go  to  church  in  open  wagons."  A  new  pe- 
riod is  clearly  at  hand  for  the  long-oppressed 
slave  of  the  Russian  household.  In  1677  and 
1679  legislation  is  enacted  in  favor-  of  property- 
f holding  by  wives.  Woman,  after  eight  centu- 
ries of  exclusion  from  the  Russian  throne,  again 
takes  her  place  at  the  head  of  the  state  in  the 
person  of  the  regent  Sophia,1  who  in  intellect, 
enterprise,  force  of  character,  and  education, 
fitly  represents  the  awakened  feminine  con- 
sciousness and  aspiration  of  her  time.     The  ad- 

1  To  be  followed,  in  due  course,  as  Empresses,  by  Catherine  I., 
the  two  Annes,  Elizabeth  Petrovna,  and  Catherine  II.,  —a  whole 
galaxy  of  feminine  talent. 


148  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

vent  of  Peter  brought,  if  not  the  complete 
emancipation  of  "vpmen,,a  host  of  reforms  in 
their  favor.  » T$h:tererk  was  abolished .  Hence- 
forth Russian*\^nfen  were  to  appear  in  society 
and  dress  in  the  European  manner.  Parents 
were  prohibited  by  law  from  causing  children 
to  marry  against  their  will,  while  the  betrothal 
was  legally  fixed  to  take  place  six  weeks  before 
the  marriage,  in  order  that  the  couple  might 
become  acquainted  with  each  other,  and  break 
off  the  engagement  if  they  thought  necessary. 
The  law  forbidding  uneducated  gentlemen  to 
marry  was  an  attempt  to  bring  enlightenment 
into  families  which  stood  in  far  greater  need  of 
culture  than  of  wealth.  Servile  diminutives 
and  prostrations  were  no  longer  permitted ;  to 
wear  his  beard  and  continue  to  be  a  Russian 
Slav  entailed  upon  each  subject  who  refused  to 
shave  a  fine  of  from  thirty  to  one  hundred  rou- 
bles ;  the  pravezh  took  a  milder  form.  Numer- 
ous foreigners  were  brought  to  Russia ;  many 
books  were  translated  into  the  language  of  the 
country,  to  the  end  that  its  institutions  and  in- 
dustries, its  manners  and  customs,  might  thence- 
forth belong  to  European  rather  than  Russian 
civilization.  So  sudden  and  violent  were  the 
reforms  that  even  church  literature  underwent 
their  modifying  influence.  The  orthodox  youth 
is  warned  by  Possoshkov  that  he  must  not  pay 


WESTERN  ENLIGHTENMENT.  149 

'court  to  two  or  three  young  women  at  the  same 
time,  on  the  ground  that  I4  woman  is  not  an  an- 
imal, but  a  human  being."  The  >same  writer 
counsels  husbands  to  undertake  nothing  without 
first  advising  with  'their  wives,  remarking,  "  She 
is,  before  God,  not  his^  ■  servant,  but  his  helper. 
She  is  not  even  a  mere  helper,  but  equal  with 
the  husband.  Even  when  the  wife  is  intellect- 
ually incapable,  you  must  hear  her  counsel,  if 
only  to  carry  out  the  will  of  God.  If  she  gives 
bad  advice,  God  will  help  the  husband  to  see 
what  it  is  necessary  for  him  to  do." 

Peter  originated  no  new  movement,  but 
merely  gave  a  sudden  and  violent  impulse  to  a 
process  already  begun.  He  incarnated  the  spirit 
of  the  time.  All  its  tendencies  found  expression 
in  himself.  A  genuine  migrant,  he  had  an  in- 
tense love  of  travel.  His  predilection  for  the 
foreign  amounted  to  a  passion  ;  his  eager  recep- 
tivity for  knowledge  linked  him  with  the  peo- 
ple. That  he  was  the  most  realistic  Russian 
of  his  time  —  perhaps  that  Russia  has  ever  pro- 
duced—  is  shown  by  the  practical  character 
and  studied  utility  of  all  his  reforms.  Like 
those  of  the  people,  his  aspirations  were  upward 
and  onward,  for  racial  movements  carry  mon- 
archs  along  with  them  as  well  as  slaves.  Yet 
despite  these  common  points  of  agreement  to 
facilitate  understanding  with  each  other,  it  was 


150  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

inevitable  that  hostilities  should  break  out  be- 
tween a  ruler  who  lived  in  the  future  and  sub- 
jects whose  predilections  lay  in  the  past.  Peter 
was  a  Slav  like  the  rest,  but  unlike  the  rest  he 
was  born  an  autocrat,  and  could  no  more  rid  him- 
self of  the  influence  of  circumstance  than  could 
the  classes  over  whom  he  ruled.  The  people 
could  not  brook  absolute  power,  and  Peter  could 
not  brook  popular  power.  Traditions  which, 
under  one  set  of  circumstances,  produced  popular 
hatred  of  monocracy,  under  another  set  arrayed 
the  individual  against  pantocracy.  It  was  the 
union  of  two  passions,  one  individual,  arising 
out  of  position,  the  other  racial,  a  product  of 
growth,  that  gave  so  much  harshness  to  the  re- 
former's character  and  activity.  Had  Peter 
been  less  of  a  Slav  he  would  have  been  less  of  a 
despot.  On  the  other  hand,  had  he  not  been 
born  to  power  he  might  have  won  it  for  him- 
self. His  struggle  against  the  popular  resis- 
tance had  especial  elements  of  difficulty.  He 
had  ascended  the  throne  in  the  full  tide  of  a 
thinly  disguised  political  revolt.  By  all  the 
methods  which  it  could  compass  —  by  church 
secessions,  by  religious  insurrection,  by  brigan- 
dage and  risings  —  the  country  had  expressed 
its  resistance  to  authority.  Peter  not  only  con- 
ceded nothing  to  that  resistance :  he  provoked 
it  with  every  expedient  of  a  fertile  brain,  and 


WESTERN  ENLIGHTENMENT.  151 

then  foiled  it  at  the  top  of  its  bent  by  bringing 
against  it  all  the  instruments  of  brute  force 
which  an  unlimited  command  of  the  resources 
of  punitive  cruelty  placed  at  his  disposal.  It 
was  the  same  old  issue  that  Peter  now  revived 
with  a  thousand  aggravations.  Just  as  merely 
superficial  appearances  failed  to  explain  the 
quarrel  between  Nikon  and  the  Old  Believers,  so 
there  was  a  deeper  meaning  in  the  new  dispute 
than  any  that  could  be  drawn  from  the  outer 
aspects  of  a  petty  squabble  between  the  advo- 
cates of  Slav  institutions  and  the  partisans  of 
west  European  civilization.  In  the  one  as  in 
the  other  case  the  popular  revolt  was  against 
authority  and  all  that  it  represented ;  against 
centralization,  against  beaurocracy,  against  un- 
due tax-gathering ;  against,  in  fine,  the  com- 
bined burdens  of  an  ecclesiastically  and  auto- 
cratically governed  state. 

Jealous  of  every  authority  save  that  of  the 
Tsar,  Peter  took  early  steps  to  secure  the  field 
of  sovereignty  wholly  to  himself.  To  the  popu- 
lar resistance  he  opposed  the  inquisitions  and 
barbarities  of  a  secret  tribunal.  The  privileges 
of  the  Little  Russians  he  struck  down  by  abol- 
ishing their  hetmanate.  By  a  series  of  terrible 
massacres  he  broke  the  power  of  the  stryeltsy. 
Distrustful  of  the  monks,  whose  sympathies 
were  not  with  the  reforms,  he  forbade  them  the 


152  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

use  of  pens  and  ink  in  their  cells.  He  warned 
the  bishops  against  display  and  ostentation,  in- 
structing them  to  receive  and  permit  no  marks 
of  popular  reverence.  The  dissenters  were  re- 
lentlessly persecuted.  Peter  could  brook  no 
rival,  even  in  spiritual  matters,  and  so,  abolish- 
ing the  patriarchate,  he  became  as  supremely 
head  of  the  church  as  he  had  been  before  in- 
contestably  autocrat  of  the  state.  Finally,  we 
see  him  —  distrustful  even  in  the  paternal  rela- 
tionship —  sanctioning  the  murder  of  his  own 
son.1 

Peter's  egoism  and  energy,  his  ambition,  his 
callous  insensibility  to  human  suffering,  seemed 
to  give  autocratic  rule  in  Russia  a  new  and  vi- 
rile lease  of  power.  The  Tsar  reformer  left  the 
Russian  state  superficially  stronger  than  ever, 
—  stronger  by  its  union  with  the  church,  by 
pressure  of  the  nobility  into  its  service,  by  a 
more  perfect  system  of  money-raising,  and  an 
increase  in  the  authority  of  the  proprietorial  tax- 
gatherer  over  the  enslaved  tiller  of  the  soil  di- 
rectly related  to  the  increased  authority  of  the 
monarch  himself.  But  Peter  did  more  than 
simply  perfect  this  half  Mongol,  half  Byzantine 
legacy  that  had  fallen  into  his  hands.  The  ex- 
isting system  was  essentially  Asian.  Peter 
sought  to  make  it  European.     Previous  Tsars 

1  Knouted  to  death. 


WESTERN  ENLIGHTENMENT.  153 

had  been  content  to  build  up  the  Russian  state 
homogeneously ;  Peter  and  his  reforms  raised  a 
problem  that  was  destined  at  last  to  form  the 
one  great  question  of  the  national  life,  before 
which  all  others  were  to  be  of  mere  secondary- 
interest.  How  long  and  to  what  degree  was  it 
possible  to  reconcile  to  the  old  cadre  of  auto- 
cratic government  this  filling  in  of  western  cul- 
ture ?  How  many  centuries  could  Tsarism  hope 
to  go  on  pouring  out  the  bright  new  wine  of 
modern  civilization  into  those  ancient  bottles  of 
Asian  despotism  that  Europe  has  never  toler- 
ated save  in  her  curiosity  shops  ?  In  the  light 
of  questions  like  these  Peter's  work  possesses  a 
double  significance.  Constructively,  and  within 
the  immediate  limits  of  his  activity,  the  re- 
former did  more  to  strengthen  the  foundations 
of  despotism  in  Russia,  perhaps,  than  any  other 
member  of  the  Romanov  family.  Unconsciously 
and  prospectively,  he  struck  despotism  a  blow 
from  which  it  was  destined  never  to  recover. 
No  avowed  champion  of  the  people,  aided  by  the 
most  favorable  circumstances,  could  have  done 
such  effective  battle  for  Russian  liberties  as  that 
compassed  by  the  champion  of  absolute  power. 
Earlier  than  the  reforms  by  a  century  had  the 
West  sent  out  into  the  Russian  land  her  pio- 
neers of  enlightenment ;  like  the  serpent  brood 
at  the  root  of  Yggdrasil,  the  world-tree  of  Scan- 


154  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

dinavian  myth,  they  lay  gnawing  at  the  base  of 
autocratic  rule,  silently,  if  slowly,  undermining 
that  structure  of  ages  to  its  fall.  But  Peter 
was  the  first  to  fairly  robe  Russian  tyranny  in 
the  Nessus-shirt  of  European  civilization.  This 
was  the  reformer's  real  significance  for  the  na- 
tional, life.  This  was  his  title  to  greatness  and 
to  glory. 

Eagerly  welcoming  as  enlightenment  what  it 
had  resisted  as  authority,  Russia,  once  fairly  in 
the  new  path,  went  on  steadily  assimilating 
west  European  manners.  The  courts  of  em- 
presses and  emperors  became  brilliant  centres 
of  foreign  culture.  Under  Anna  Ivanovna  Ger- 
man influence  reigned  almost  as  despotically  as 
the  Tsaritsa  herself.  It  was  the  privilege  of 
Elizabeth  Petrovna,  who  opened  relations  with 
France,  surrounding  herself  with  French  emi- 
grants, to  witness  not  only  the  first  successes  of 
the  new  civilization,  but  also  the  birth  of  Rus- 
sian literature  in  Lomonossov.  Foreign  in- 
fluence, principally  French,  fired  the  wit  as  it 
embellished  the  reign  of  Catherine  II.,  and  only 
culminated,  under  Alexander  I.,  in  a  brilliant 
epoch  wherein  Russia  seemed  to  follow  the  ex- 
ample of  France  by  crowding  the  most  illus- 
trious of  her  names  into  a  single  page  of  the 
national  history.  In  some  of  the  earliest  years 
of  the  century  now  about  to  close,  we  see  Rus- 


WESTERN  ENLIGHTENMENT,  155 

sia  not  only  saturated  with  the  science  and 
learning  of  the  West,  but  mature  enough  to 
have  a  national  literature  of  her  own.  From 
Kantimir,  Derzhavin,  Karamzin,  Zhukovsky, 
representing  the  foreign  and  unripe  period  of 
the  new  culture,  the  country  grew  to  Pushkin, 
Gogol,  Koltsov,  Krylov,  Griboyedov,  Turgeniev, 
and  others,  representing  the  national  or  intro- 
spective period  of  the  intellectual  movement. 
The  emancipation  of  the  serfs,  the  impulse  given 
to  popular  and  university  education,  the  spread 
of  the  literary  spirit  by  reviews  and  newspapers, 
all  events  of  the  reign  of  Alexander  II.,  seemed 
to  bring  Russian  civilization  to  its  highest  point. 
What,  now,  was  the  character  of  this  prog- 
ress ?  Did  it  tend  to  reconcile  the  people  to 
authority,  or  was  its  influence  one  provocative 
of  hostility  to  the  system  of  rule  by  absolute 
power  ?  It  must  be  remembered  that  then  as 
now  the  Russian  government,  alike  in  the  man- 
ner of  its  origin  and  the  methods  of  its  oper- 
ation, was  a  unique  national  phenomenon  in 
Europe.  It  was  in  the  autocratic  order  of  so- 
ciety that  all  Russian  literature,  uninfluenced 
from  without,  had  its  foundation.  The  foreign 
literature  read  so  eagerly  by  the  receptive  Rus- 
sians presupposed  an  entirely  different  consti- 
tution of  society  and  order  of  things.  When 
least  political  in  its  character  it  offered  number- 


156  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

less  contrasts  with  Russian  life ;  when  most 
political  it  formed  a  literature  of  propaganda. 
Enlightenment,  even  when  pure  and  simple, 
was  the  foe  of  all  despotism ;  knowledge  used  to 
glorify  liberty  could  not  fail  to  hasten  the  pro- 
cessed tha*t  were  disintegrating  a  semi-Asian 
state.  Such  had  been  the  influence  of  the  for- 
eign culture  and  ideas  that  in  the  first  years  of 
the  century  we  see  Alexander  I.  consulting  with 
statesmen  whose  ideal  constitution  was  a  gov- 
ernment in  the  English  and  not  in  the  Rus- 
sian manner.  Montesquieu,  Rousseau,  Byron, 
Goethe,  Schiller,  had  an  audience  in  Russia  fully 
as  eager  and  impressionable,  if  not  as  large,  as 
that  to  which  they  appealed  amongst  their  own 
countrymen.  Griboyedov,  in  "  Gore*  ot  uma" 
(The  Misfortune  of  having  Brains),  and  Gogol, 
in  "The  Revisor,"  supplied  the  material  for 
gloomy  comparisons  of  Russian  with  west  Euro- 
pean civilization.  In  the  third  and  fourth  dec- 
ades of  the  ^century  we  see  the  Russian  youth 
studying  Schelling  and  Hegel,  absorbing  the  doc- 
trines of  Fourrier  and  St.  Simon.  The  art  school 
of  Bielinsky  finds  its  antithesis  in  the  realistic 
school  of  Pissarev.  Popular  translations  of  the 
works  of  Darwhv  Biichner,  Moleschott,  and 
Buckle  are  eagerly  read.  The^  students  devour 
Prudhon  and.  Louis  Blanc.  -Gferhishevsky  in 
the   sixth   decade   popularizes  the  writings  of 


WESTERN  ENLIGHTENMENT.  157 

John  Stuart  Mill,  -and  formulates,  in  "  Shto 
dyelat "  (What  -s'to  be  done),  a  scheme  for  the 
reconstruction  of  society.  The  socialistic  ideas 
of  the  time  find  expression  in  the  "Contempo- 
rary," in  which  both  Qhefnislievsky'  and  Dobro- 
lyubov  champion  western  thought. 

Such,  briefly,  was  the  European  period  of 
Russian  development.  That  it  was  a  period  of 
high  and  valuable  acquisition  for  the  national 
life  is  incontestable.  The  machinery  of  the 
first  reforms  was  unquestionably  despotic.  For- 
eign manners  were  frequently  associated  with 
foreign  morals.  But  a  real  and  beneficial  en- 
lightenment took  place.  Western  culture,  in 
emancipating  women  and  children  from  domes- 
tic tyranny,  merely  anticipated  by  a  few  years 
an  inevitable  reaction  from  the  sway  of  the 
"Domostroi."  Foreign  literature  stimulated 
native  minds  until  the  Russians  could  create  a 
literature  of  their  own.  It  was  foreign  ideas 
thai;  led  to  the  emancipation  of  the  serf ;  it  was 
foreign  ideas  that  gave  the  country  imperfect 
yet  priceless  educational  advantages ;  it  was 
foreign  ideas  to  which  must  be  referred  all  con- 
cessions of  absolute  power  to  absolute  subjection 
that  have  been  made  in  Russia  firing  the  pres- 
ent century. 

On  the  other  hand, 'we  have  seen  how  intoler- 
ance of  autocracy  increased  in   proportion  to 


158  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

the  degree  ami  character  of  the  incoming  en- 
lightenment.^ The  greater  the  Russian^  love 
of  foreign  institutions,  the  greater  was  his  de- 
testation of  those  at  his  own  door.  )  Science 
gave  an  immense  'impulse  to  this  critical  intro- 
spection. The  realism  that  produced  incredu- 
lity in  matters  of  religious  faith  led  to  the  rejec- 
tion of  the  most  venerable  dogmas  in  politics. 
If  now  and  then  "  emancipated "  circles  of 
young  people  deemed  it  proper  to  reject  author- 
ity in  the  family,  and  withdraw  reverence  from, 
the  sacred  mysteries  of  the  church,  whati  obe- 
dience and  consideration  could  they  be  expected 
to  show  to  the  head  of  the  state  ?  The  very 
sanctity  of  life  itself  came  to  be  questioned. 
What  was  nature,  reasoned  the  young  material- 
ist, but  an  eternal  process  of  reproduction  and 
annihilation,  a  process  in  which  life  is  continu- 
ally purchased  at  the  cost  of  death,  a  process" in 
which  the  general  and  not  the  individual  weal 
is  the  supreme  law  ?  If  by  the  death  of  one 
man  millions  could  be  made  happier,  would  not 
that  be  a  gain?  Such  was  the  terrible  question- 
ing that  arose  out  of  the  new  knowledge  from 
the  West,  and  such  the  exaggerated  forms  in 
which  the  issues  of  a  great  problem  had  begun 
to  present  themselves.  Yet  they  were  nothing 
more  than  a  natural  reaction  from  the  evils  of 
a  system  which  the  Russian  mind  was  rejecting 


WESTERN  ENLIGHTENMENT.  159 

with  a  dangerous  suddenness,  rather  than  in  a 
movement  of  recoil  at  once  slow  and  safe.  The 
emancipation  of  women  could  not  fail  to  pre- 
r  sentvpIiehomena  of  an  analogous  character.  Of 
Russian  w^men. in  1843,  Haxthausen  writes  :  — 

"  If,  instead"  of  going  into  Egypt  to  look  for  the 
free  woman,  the  Saint  Simonians  had  made  a  voyage 
to  Russia,  they  would  have  come  back  perhaps  more 
satisfied.  In  a  family  well  organized,  it  is  the  hus- 
band who  reigns  and  the  wife  who  governs ;  but  in 
Russia  it  is  quite  the  contrary.  Many  of  the  peas- 
ant women  work  very  much  less  than  with  us  in  the 
country  districts.  Men  in  Russia  even  perform  part 
of  the  household  work :  they  carry  water,  wood,  and 
make  the  fire.  Amongst  the  bourgeoisie  and  mer- 
chant class  the  women  pass  the  day  doing  nothing." 

And  when,  in  comparatively  recent  times, 
young  female  students  donned  male  garments 
and  cut  their  hair  short  like  that  of  men,  the 
vagary  was  not  nearly  so  unnatural  as  it  seemed 
to  the  many  superficial  observers  who  held  it 
up  to  ridicule.  The  reaction  was  from  a  state 
of  things  for  which  hardly  any  exaggeration 
could  furnish  an  adequate  antithesis.  No  pe- 
culiarity of  attire  or  manner  could  so  unsex 
woman  as  she  was  unsexed  by  the  terem  and 
the  u  Domostroi."  The  wonder  is  not  that  she 
rebelled,  but  that  she  did  not  rebel  in  some 
more  terrible  and  tragic  manner. 


\ 


FIRST  FRUITS. 


If  the  state  policy  of  Peter  was  faithfully 
continued  by  his  successors,  the  spirit  of  revolt 
was  kept  alive  by  the  miserable  condition  of 
the  people,  and  by  the  numerous  provocations 
they  suffered  at  the  hands  of  autocratic  power. 
Scarcely  had  Catherine  II.  ascended  the  throne 
when  a  terrible  insurrection  broke  out  in  Mos- 
cow. The  mob  cried,  "  It  is  not  for  us  Ortho- 
dox to  suffer  the  injustice  of  authority  !  "  Two 
years  later  an  extensive  rebellion  was  led  by 
Pugachev,  who  gathered  under  his  banner  fugi- 
tive serfs,  dissenters,  Volga  pirates,  and  men  of 
all  reputable  and  disreputable  classes  from  the 
Volga  regions.  The  rising  was  in  itself  of  small 
significance.  "It  is  not  Pugachev  that  is  im- 
portant," wrote  Catherine's  agent  ;  "  it  is  the 
general  discontent."  The  serfs  rebelled  against 
their  masters  ;  the  Tatar  tribes  rose  against  the 
Russians  ;  a  frightful  revolution  seemed  on  the 
point  of  shaking  the  empire  to  its  fall.  But 
Tsar  ism  acted  promptly  ;  Catherine  hung  Pu- 
gachev and  destroyed  the  Zaporog  republic  of 


FIRST  FRUITS.  161 

free  Cossacks.  A  few  years  later  the  dilettante 
empress  amused  her  favorite  nobles  by  making 
them  presents  of  human  beings,  a  step  which 
transferred  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  men 
and  women  from  the  crown  lands,  where  their 
lot  was  tolerable,  to  the  conditions  of  private 
serfdom,  where  it  was  incomparably  more 
wretched.  In  1767  the  correspondent  of  Vol- 
taire issued  an  ukaz  forbidding  serfs  to  make 
complaints  about  their  masters  and  mistresses, 
-and  giving  to  the  latter  the  right  to  deport  the 
slaves  to  Siberia.  Later,  Catherine  established 
serfage  in  Little  Russia.1 

It  was  in  the  reign  of  Catherine  that  the  re- 
volt against  authority,  hitherto  expressed  in 
general  discontent  or  in  outbreaks  that  aimed 
only  indirectly  against  the  existing  regime,  began 
to  take  the  form  of  conspiracy.  At  first  the 
movement  seems  to  have  sheltered  itself  in  free- 
masonry societies,  and  to  have  been  confined  to 
the  planning  of  an  improved  form  of  govern- 
ment for  Russia,  such  as  might  be  discussed 
amongst  the  intelligent  classes  without  exciting 
suspicion.  Its  leader  in  Catherine's  time  was 
one  Novikov,  who  did  much  to  disseminate  the 
new  culture  amongst  the  masses,  who  after- 
wards suffered  from  the  disrepute  into  which 

1  Was  not  this  the  lady  of  whom  Voltaire  wrote,   "  C'est  du 
Nord,  aujourd'hui,  que  nous  vient  la  lumiere  "  V 
11 


162  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

freemasonry  fell,  and  finally  came  to  be  re- 
garded by  some  as  the  father  of  the  Russian 
revolt.  But  the  modern  and  aggressive  phase 
of  the  revolt  had  not  yet  begun.  It  took  the 
cumulative  irritations  of  three  reigns  after  that 
of  Catherine  to  give  it  anything  like  a  perma- 
nent footing  in  Russia.  Of  these,  the  schemes 
of  Paul  for  the  support  of  sovereign  authority 
were  amongst  the  first  signs  of  the  distrust  with 
which  the  successors  of  Peter  began  to  regard 
^European  ideas. '  At  first  Tsarism  had  deluded 
ifeelf  into  the  belief  that  it  could  combine  a 
state  organization  as  despotic  as  that  of  Russia 
and  a  civilization  as  advanced  as  that  of  Eng- 
land or  France.  Gradually,  by  force  of  mere 
suspicion  at  the  outset,  afterwards  by  the  logic 
of  facts,  this  simple  faith  gave  way  to  a  recog- 
nition of  the  utter  impossibility  of  holding  to- 
gether a  dual  state,  of  which  the  ruling  elements 
were  irreconcilable  with  each  other.  To  lessen 
the  antagonism,  to  correct  the  harm  already 
done,  Tsarism  hit  upon  the  expedient  of  filter- 
ing foreign  ideas  through  the  censure ;  in  urgent 
cases,  of  excluding  them  altogether.  A  panic 
fear  of  the  West  and  of  Western  influences  dis- 
played itself  in  many  of  the  measures  of  Paul 
and  his  successors.  In  close  attendance  upon 
it  we  seem  to  see  in  the  autocratic  mind  a  vague 
consciousness  of  injustice,  a  sense  even  as  of  guilt 


FIRST  FRUITS.  163 

that  could  not  be  shaken  off.  This  overwhelm- 
ing disproportion  in  the  balance  of  power  on  the 
side  of  the  ruler,  the  crowding  of  all  final  au- 
thority into  a  single  individuality,  the  practical 
annihilation  of  the  people  as  factors  of  national 
government,  —  all  these  pressed  upon  the  rep- 
resentative of  Tsarism  with  crushing  weight. 

Alexander  I.  began  by  coquetting  with  West- 
ern culture,  and  ended  by  holding  it  in  profound 
distrust.  He  had  a  particular  fear  of  the  for- 
eign pedagogue  and  governess. 

"  Our  nobles,"  runs  a  state  paper  of  which  Alex- 
ander approved,  "  the  support  of  the  empire,  are 
brought  up  frequently  in  the  care  of  persons  who  .  .  . 
despise  everything  native,  and  have  neither  sound 
acquirements  nor  proper  moral  principles.  The  other 
classes  imitate  the  nobility,  and  help  to  compass  the 
overthrow  of  society  by  handing  their  children  over 
to  foreigners  to  be  educated.  .  .  .  Foreigners  are  also 
chosen  to  impart  instruction  in  the  sciences ;  this 
doubles  the  injury,  and  is  rapidly  rooting  out  the 
national  spirit." 

In  order  to  remedy  the  state  of  things  com- 
plained of,  Alexander  decreed  that  in  future  the 
founders  of  private  schools  should  be  tested  for 
"  morality  "  rather  than  for  knowledge.  An 
ukaz  issued  in  1824  enjoined  the  closest  watch- 
fulness upon  the  censure,  in  order  that  influen- 
ces might  be  counteracted  that  were  spreading 


164  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

"  immorality,  infidelity,  and  sedition."  An 
ukaz  of  the  same  period  aimed  at  suppressing 
the  school  circulation  of  certain  "  dangerous  " 
works.  From  the  universities  several  profess- 
ors were  dismissed.  The  further  teaching  of 
natural  philosophy  and  the  political  sciences 
was  forbidden.  The  students  were  henceforth 
required  to  live  in  the  fear  of  God  and  the  Or- 
thodox faith,  to  show  the  due  respect  and  hold 
themselves  in  proper  subordination  to  all  offi- 
cials of  the  university  and  the  state,  to  refrain 
from  attending  theatres  and  social  gatherings 
without  permission,  not  to  go  beyond  the  limits 
of  the  town,  even  on  botanizing  tours,  without 
the  authority  of  the  school  chief ;  not  to  be  seen 
in  public  taverns  or  hotels,  not  to  read  books 
inimical  to  the  Orthodox  faith  or  to  the  existing 
method  of  government,  not  to  leave  the  univer- 
sity or  school  without  permission.  The  press 
was  crippled  and  a  ban  laid  upon  the  teachings 
of  Newton  and  Copernicus.  The  earth  still 
moved,  but  not  for  Alexander  ;  the  apple  con- 
tinued to  fall,  but  the  Russian  monarch  had 
made  up  his  mind  to  ignore  the  phenomenon. 
Such  were  some  of  the  irritations  contrived  for 
the  towns  and  town  life.  Alexander  also  found 
time  to  guard  the  agricultural  populations 
against  evil  influences.  In  a  number  of  dis- 
tricts he   established   military  colonies.      The 


FIRST  FRUITS.  165 

scheme  was  one  for  recruiting  the  army  with- 
out crippling  agriculture,  and  for  keeping  up  a 
healthy  sentiment  of  loyalty  amongst  the  com- 
mon people.  These  ends  were  to  be  accom- 
plished by  the  unmarried  soldiers  of  each  colony 
becoming  the  husbands  of  the  peasants'  daugh- 
ters. The  wretched  muzhik,  upon  whom  the 
whole  weight  of  the  state  lay,  resented  this  new 
burden.  In  the  new  temper  of  the  people,  his 
revolt  against  authority  took  the  direct  form. 
It  was  repressed  with  great  cruelty. 

Unfortunately  for  the  success  of  Alexander's 
plotting  against  Western  ideas,  there  was  one 
inlet  for  them  which  no  rigors  of  censorship 
could  close  up  or  even  hold  in  surveillance. 
The  Napoleonic  wars  and  the  part  Alexander 
played  in  them  had  brought  some  of  the  most 
thoughtful  men  and  officers  of  the  Russian 
army  into  direct  contact  with  west  European 
civilization.  No  longer  mere  students  of  the 
French  revolution,  drinking  in  from  books  the 
teachings  of  the  Encyclopaedists,  at  last  they 
stood  in  Paris,  in  the  heart  of  that  bright  world 
of  ideas,  upon  which  they  had  gazed  so  ardently 
and  so  long  from  the  dark  planet  of  their  own 
destiny ;  at  last  thousands  of  observing  Rus- 
sians, belonging  to  all  ranks  in  the  army  and 
militia,  seemed  to  have  broken  through  the  re- 
strictions upon  foreign  travel,  and  to  be  wan- 


166  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

dering  over  western  Europe,  comparing  their 
own  lot  with  that  of  the  foreigner,  storing  up 
impressions  and  experiences,  collecting  knowl- 
edge, and  committing  facts  to  memory,  that 
were  afterwards  to  cross  the  frontier  in  too  in- 
tangible a  shape  to  suffer  interference  at  the 
hands  of  censor  or  officer  of  the  custom  house, 
yet  full  of  a  potency  that  could  not  be  esti- 
mated in  terms  of  physical  force.  The  true 
and  first  propaganda  of  the  revolt  began  when 
these  traveling  Russians  carried  back  to  their 
countrymen  at  home  the  story  of  what  they  had 
seen  in  Europe.      Many  of  them,  like  Pestel, 

'  noticed  that  u  the  states  in  which  no  revolution 
had  taken  place  continued  to  be  deprived  of 
many  rights  and  privileges ;  "  not  a  few  of  the 
officers    recrossed    the  frontier  with  the    fixed 

/purpose  of  "  importing  France  into  Russia." 
In  1815  the  two  brothers  Muraviev  founded  the 
"  Arsamass,"  a  literary  society  with  political 
objects.  At  first  the  conspirators  hoped  to  ob- 
tain a  new  constitution  by  peaceful  agitation. 
But  the  "crowned  Hamlet"  of  Russian  autoc- 
racy, as  Herzen  called  him,  blighted  these 
hopes  by  closing  all  the  Freemasons'  lodges, 
and  by  harassing  the  more  enlightened  classes 
through  the  censure  and  the  police.  In  1817 
the  "  Alliance  du  Bien  JStre "  came  into  ex- 
istence under  the  leadership  of  Pestel.     Then 


FIRST  FRUITS.  167 

followed  the  Society  of  the  North,  with  its 
headquarters  at  St.  Petersburg,  and  the  Society 
of  the  South,  stationed  at  Moscow.  The  So- 
ciety of  Virtue  was  dissolved,  but  two  other 
organizations  stepped  into  its  place.  Over  the 
four  societies  now  in  existence  Pestel's  influence 
was  predominant.  The  general  object  of  the 
conspirators  was  to  set  up  a  federated  Slav 
republic  or  constitutional  monarchy .\\  Pestel 
planned  the  seizure  and  execution  of  the  royal 
family,  and  the  proclamation  of  a  new  govern- 
ment by  the  Senate  and  the  Holy  Synod,  who 
were  to  be  forced  into  the  part  assigned  to  them 
by  a  military  insurrection.  Many  soldiers  were 
gained  over  to  the  scheme,  but  the  outbreak 
itself  was  badly  carried  out,  and  had  no  leaders 
worthy  of  the  name.  Prince  Trubetskoy,  the 
head  elect  of  the  new  government,  was  no- 
where to  be  found  in  the  moment  of  danger. 
When  at  last  the  outbreak  came  Alexander  was 
dead,  and  Nicholas,  with  an  insurrection  barring 
his  way  to  the  throne,  plied  the  two  thousand 
revolting  soldiers  with  grape  shot.  The  rising 
was  easily  crushed.  Pestel,  Ryliev,  Sergius 
Muravev,  Bestyuzhev-Ryumin,  and  Kakhovsky 
expiated  their  aspirations  and  bravery  on  the 
scaffold ;  one  hundred  and  sixteen  others  were 
banished  to  Siberia. 

This  first  conversion  of  the  spirit  of  revolt 


168  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

into  terms  of  force  ended  in  an  apparent  disaster 
,  for  the  conspirators.  Yet  it  was  the  conspirators 
who  were  really  victorious.  Nothing  could  have 
given  so  vital  and  stimulating  an  impulse  to 
the  cause  of  Russian  revolt  as  a  failure  which 
was  destined  to  array  the  very  worst  tendencies 
of  absolutism  against  the  rising  intelligence  of 
the  people.  Nicholas  was  a  born  despot,  but 
^  his  despotism  as  a  Tsar  drew  not  a  little  of  its 
selfish  egoism  and  unbounded  cruelty  from  the 
irritating  events  of  the  14th  of  December.  Had 
.the  purpose  of  the  Dekabrists  been  to  show 
autocracy  at  its  worst,  and  in  this  way  to  array 
against  it  all  the  potencies  of  popular  resistance, 
their  success  could  not  have  been  greater  than 
it  was.  Had  Nicholas  aimed  at  calling  forth  all 
the  bitterness  and  hostility  which  the  hearts  of 
his  subjects  could  cherish  towards  despotic  rule, 
he  could  not  have  acted  more  in  harmony  with 
such  a  purpose  than  he  did.  A  monarch  so  in- 
genious in  devising  methods  of  popular  irrita- 
tion perhaps  never  sat  on  the  Russian  throne. 
We  see  him  laying  his  iron  hand  on  everything 
that  could  be  suspected  of  contributing  to  the 
fast  growing  discontent.  Foreign  travel,  the 
study  of  foreign  languages  and  literatures, 
teaching  by  foreigners  or  by  Russians  who  had 
been  educated  abroad,  —  all  these  were  made 
the  subject  of  numerous  prohibitory  or  restric- 


FIRST  FRUITS.  169 

tive  decrees.  The  inculcation  of  German  philos- 
ophy he  ingeniously  confined  to  the  priests,  the 
majority  of  whom  did  not  know  the  language 
of  their  own  liturgies,  not  to  say  anything  of 
the  tongue  of  Schelling  and  Hegel  and  Kant. 

The  revolt  gradually  obtained  recognition  in 
official  circles.  Attempts  were  even  made  to 
explain  it.  Numerous  rescripts  and  decrees, 
particularly  school  orders  and  university  papers, 
declare  the  harm  to  have  arisen  through  the 
idleness  of  the  student,  the  "  luxury  of  half 
knowledge  "  wrought  by  the  prevailing  system 
of  education,  and  the  immoral  influences  of  pri- 
vate tuition  under  the  care  of  foreign  masters 
and  pedagogues.  The  elements  of  the  problem 
awaiting  solution  are  thus  summed  up  by  Uva- 
rov,  minister  of  public  instruction,  in  a  report 
to  the  Tsar  dated  19th  November,  1833 :  — 

"  Russia  has  preserved  a  warm  faith  in  certain  re- 
ligious, moral,  and  political  ideas  peculiar  to  its  own 
conditions  and  circumstances.  But  how  shall  these 
principles,  which  lack  unity  and  centrality,  and  have 
had  to  sustain  an  uninterrupted  struggle  during  the 
past  thirty  years,  be  brought  into  harmony  with  the 
present  temper  of  the  times  ?  Shall  we  be  able  so  to 
include  them  in  our  system  of  universal  education  as 
to  combine  the  advantages  of  our  own  time  with  the 
traditions  of  the  past  and  hopes  for  the  future?  How 
may  we  devise  a  system  of  popular  education  which 


170  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

shall  correspond  with  our  own  state  of  things  and  yet 
not  be  foreign  to  the  European  spirit  ?  Whose  strong 
and  experienced  hand  can  keep  intellectual  aspirations 
within  the  limits  of  quiet  and  order,  and  at  the  same 
time  ward  off  everything  likely  to  prove  inimical  to 
the  welfare  of  the  state  ?  " 

Or,  in  other  words,  "  How  shall  we  reconcile 
a  European  culture  with  an  Asian  method  of 
government  ?  "  It  was  the  old  issue.  Uvarov 
was  seeking  a  modus  vivendi  between  the  two 
forces,  and  he  was  clearly  aiming  at  the  impos- 
sible. Western  ideas  had  already  shown  their 
hostility  to  Tsarism,  and  no  experiments  with 
education,  no  dismissing  of  professors,  no  cru- 
sade against  foreign  teachers,  foreign  books,  and 
foreign  travel  could  force  the  new  thought  into 
a  degrading  compromise  with  its  highest  veri- 
ties and  aspirations.  The  revolt  was  to  awaken 
again,  and  that  right  quickly.  Mr.  Wallace 
tells  his  readers  that  there  was  little  need  for 
the  order  that  went  forth  after  the  hanging  of 
Pestel  and  his  fellow  patriots,  —  the  order  de- 
claring "that  there  should  be  no  more  fire- 
works, no  more  dilettante  philosophizing  or  new 
aspirations."  "Society,"  says  the  writer  named, 
"  had  discovered  to  its  astonishment  that  these 
new  ideas  .  .  .  led  in  reality  to  exile  and  the 
scaffold.  The  pleasant  dream  was  at  an  end." 
A  society  that  could  give  birth  to  men  like  Pes- 


FIRST  FRUITS.  171 

tel,  and  Ryliev,  and  Bestyuzhev,  —  to  men  who, 
under  happier  circumstances,  would  have  been 
the  salvation  of  their  country,  —  was  not  a 
society  to  underestimate  the  hazards  of  a  strug- 
gle for  liberty,  or  to  basely  yield  up  its  aspira- 
tions because  suffering  and  bloodshed  were  to  be 
the  penalties  of  realization.  The  "  pleasant 
dream "  was  not  at  an  end.  It  drew  a  fresh 
charm  from  the  intensified  despotism  of  which 
it  was  the  bright  antithesis  ;  it  furnished  gener- 
ous minds  and  hearts  with  an  ever  recurring 
means  of  escape  from  the  dreary  life  of  the  new 
regime.  And  when  at  last  tyranny  at  home 
and  dragooning  abroad  brought  Nicholas  to  the 
ignominious  reverse  in  the  Krim,  all  tongues 
that  could  give  voice  to  the  common  aspiration 
for  liberty  arose  in  condemnation  and  arraign- 
ment of  the  absolutist  monarch.  From  one  end 
of  the  empire  to  the  other  this  voice  was  heard, 
in  manuscripts,  in  pamphlets,  in  books.  The 
people  declared  they  had  been  "  kept  long 
enough  in  serfage  by  the  successors  of  the  Tatar 
Khans."  They  protested  that  God  had  not  con- 
demned them  forever  to  be  slaves. 

In  the  mean  time  a  movement  was  spreading 
in  Russia  that,  hitherto  regarded  as  an  outcome 
of  mere  literary  and  ethnological  sentiment, 
must  here  be  restored  to  its  true  place  and  signif- 
icance as  a  part  of  the  general  revolt.      In  this, 


172  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

as  in  many  other  cases,  one  cannot  fail  to  recog- 
nize the  extraordinary  vitality  of  the  process 
which  is  assailing  the  fabric  of  Tsarism.  The 
revolt  never  dies.  Driven  from  one  means  of 
aggressiveness,  it  selects  another  point  of  attack. 
Its  approaches  are  often  as  cunningly  indirect  as 
those  of  a  besieger's  parallel.  Whether  as  a  re- 
ligious quarrel,  as  an  act  of  collective  brigandage, 
as  a  military  revolution  or  a  conspiracy,  it  pre- 
serves its  character  and  aims  through  the  most 
baffling  and  Protean  disguises.  We  shall  next 
see  it,  then,  in  association  with  the  protest 
against  that  authority  which  forced  upon  an 
unwilling  people  the  innovations  of  Peter,  the 
reformer.  That  protest  had  a  double  character. 
In  their  negative  attitude  the  people  resented 
the  inroad  made  upon  their  personal  liberties, 
or  upon  so  much  of  them  as  remained ;  their 
positive  opposition  arose  out  of  a  love  of  the 
free  life  of  the  early  Slav  period  and  its  allied 
sentiment  in  favor  of  old  Russian  habits  and 
customs.  Gradually  this  protest  grew  into  a 
declared  opposition  to  west  European  culture, 
and  gradually  a  class  of  thinkers  was  formed 
who  began  to  decry  everything  foreign  and  laud 
every  thing  Slav  and  national.  Russia  had  all 
the  elements  for  such  a  reaction  within  her  own 
borders.  The  profound  distrust  with  which 
many  educated  people  regarded  the  reforms  was 


FIRST  FRUITS.  173 

intensified  amongst  the  people  by  a  natural 
hatred  of  the  despotism  with  which  they  had 
been  enforced,  —  a  despotism  which  grew  as  the 
state  grew,  and  with  every  extension  of  impe- 
rial authority  placed  new  burdens  upon  the 
shoulders  of  the  masses.  The  war  with  France, 
the  "  patriotic  "  uprising  against  Napoleon,  the 
triumphs  of  Pushkin  in  the  national  field  of 
Russian  literature,  and  the  introspective  direc- 
tion given  to  thought  by  the  writings  of  Gogol, 
— all  these  helped  to  strengthen  a  movement 
ostensibly  directed  against  foreign  culture,  but 
really  aimed  at  a  regime  which  withheld  from 
Russia  the  advantages  of  its  old  civilization. 

Under  the  impulse  of  literary  romanticism  on 
the  one  hand,  and  of  German  philosophy  on  the 
other,  the  movement  or  tendency  at  last  sepa- 
rated intellectual  Russian  society  into  two  par- 
ties. Both  elements,  conservative  and  liberal, 
we  see  represented  in  the  third  decade  of  the 
present  century  by  a  group  of  young  men  who 
met  to  study  Hegel  at  the  house  of  Stankevich,  ^ 
a  university  professor  in  Moscow.  One  of  the 
questions  discussed  was,  "  Is  a  logical  transition 
possible,  without  gap  or  obstacle,  from  pure 
Being  through  Nothing  to  Becoming  and  Exist- 
ence?" In  other  words,  "What  governs  the 
world,  the  free  creating  Will,  or  the  law  of  ne- 
cessity ?  "   Further,  "  In  what  consists  the  antith- 


174  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

esis  between  the  Russian  and  west  European 
civilization  ?  Is  it  the  degree  of  the  devel- 
opment, or  the  peculiarity  of  the  elements  of 
culture  ?  "  Finally,  "  Is  Russian  civilization  des- 
tined to  be  penetrated  not  only  by  the  superfi- 
cial results,  but  also  by  the  fundamental  sub- 
stance of  European  civilization  ?  Or  will  Rus- 
sia, after  she  has  absorbed  her  own  Orthodox 
intellectual  life,  find  in  this  a  new  phase  of  uni- 
versal human  culture  ?  "  A  political  turn  might 
be  given  to  almost  any  one  of  these  questions, 
yet  they  seem  to  have  been  discussed  without 
reference  to  questions  of  state.  The  immediate 
result  of  the  controversies  which  sprang  from 
them  was  the  formation  of  the  two  parties, — 
the  Slavophils,  or  Nationalists,  and  the  Zapad- 
niki,  or  Westerns. 

Both  were  discontented  with  the  existing  r£- 
gime.  The  Westerns,  whose  polemical  head- 
quarters were  St.  Petersburg,  admitted  the  lack 
of  self-consciousness  on  the  part  of  society,  and 
the  helplessness  and  ignorance  of  the  masses, 
but  looked  for  a  means  of  remedy  to  the  dis- 
semination of  European  knowledge  and  the 
consistent  prosecution  of  the  work  begun  by 
Peter.  The  Slavophils,  who  found  their  party 
centre  at  Moscow,  had  a  policy  in  harmony  with 
their  choice  of  camp.  They  looked  for  help  to  the 
past,  in  which  they  saw,  instead  of  tormenting 


FIRST  FRUITS.  175 

discord,  a  full  unity  between  authority,  society, 
and  the  people.  They  held  that  the  reforms  had 
separated  the  masses  from  the  upper  layer  of 
society,  which  had  abjured  them.  Thus  the 
national  unity  had  been  destroyed.  To  restore 
that  unity  it  was  necessary  to  reject  Western 
culture  and  return  to  the  old  Russian  civiliza- 
tion.1 M.  Ivan  Aksakov,  one  of  the  cleverest 
and  best  known  of  the  Slavophils,  describes  the 
reforms  of  Peter  as  having  effected  a  complete 
revolution.  "  The  state,"  he  goes  on  to  say, 
"  breaks  with  the  country  and  subjects  it.  It 
hastens  to  build  a  new  residence  that  has  noth- 
ing in  common  with  Russia,  and  has  no  root  in 
Russian  reminiscences.  While  it  breaks  faith 
with  the  land,  it  forms  itself  on  the  pattern  of 
the  West,  where  state  institutions  have  been 
most  developed,  and  introduces  the  aping  of 
western  Europe.  Everything  Russian  is  per- 
secuted. Those  of  the  state  serve  it  faithfully  ; 
the  people  remain  true  to  the  old.  Russia  is 
split  into  two.  It  has  two  capitals.  On  the  one 
hand  is  the  state,  with  its  foreign  capital  St. 
Petersburg ;  on  the  other  are  the  people,  with 
their  Russian  capital  Moscow." 

The   Slavophils    carried    on   no    conspiracy 
against  Tsarism  and  had  the  happy  fortune  not 

In  this  paragraph  I  follow  the  account  given  by  M.  Pypin  in 
vol.  ii.  of  the  Vyestnik  Yevropy.  — ' 


K 


176  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

to  be  suspected  of  disloyalty.     Yet  their  views 
and  policy,  —  formulated  not  only  by  M.  Aksa- 
kov,  but  also  by  talented  men  like  the  brothers 
Kiryevsky,    like    Khomyakov,    Valuyev,    Kon- 
stantin,  Samarin,  Koshelev,  Yelagin,  Novikov, 
Shchiskov,  —  will  be  found  to  raise  issues  against  ,  y 
Russian  absolutism  precisely  identical  in  essence 
with  those  of  the  revolt  itself.     From  the  very 
group  of    Slavophils  who  had   been    studying      ^ 
"  non-political "    philosophy    with    Stankevich    ' 
sprang  two  of  the  most  uncompromising  foes  of 
Tsarism  that  Russia  ever  produced.1 

The  Slavophils  had  a  clear  predilection  for  the 
political  characteristics  of  the  old  civilization. 
They  were  opposed  to  the  evils  that  had  been 
wrought  by  the  usurpations  of  the  autocratic 
state.  In  dwelling  on  the  unity  which  the  old 
Slav  system  secured  for  authority,  society,  and 
the  people,  they  were  simply  lauding  the  privi- 
leges of  the  pre-Muscovite  days,  of  the  time  when 
the  people  had  their  veckes,  when  the  ruler  was 
a  servant,  when  the  communal  and  urban  liber- 
ties were  intact,  and  when  the  population  gov- 
erned their  own  country,  neminem  ferans  im- 
perantem.  Nothing  had  done  so  much  to  cause 
that  separation  of  classes  of  which  they  com- 
plained as  the  growth  of  the  autocratic  state 
and  the  gradual  sacrifice  of  healthy  social  equali-  ( 

1  Herzen  and  Bakunin. 


FIRST  FRUITS.  177 

ties  to  the  financial  exigencies  of  a  centralized 
administration  and  a  unified  territory.  The  er- 
ror, sentimental  rather  than  historical,  into 
which  the  Slavophils  fell  was  that  of  choosing 
the  pre-Muscovite  period  for  idealization,  and  of 
blaming  Peter  alone  for  a  work  of  class  separa- 
tion which,  it  is  quite  clear,  began  long  before 
the  advent  of  the  reformer,  having  really  been 
^originated  under  Byzantine  and  Mongolic  influ- 
ence. 

When  Slavophilism  grew  into  the  wider 
ethnological  conception  of  Panslavism,  the  move- 
ment showed  its  inner  solidarity  with  the  revolt 
in  new  forms.  The  aim  of  the  party  was  to 
bring  into  a  union  more  or  less  close  all  the 
branches  of  the  Slav  stock.  The  scheme  further 
contemplated  the  headship  of  the  Tsar,  and 
the  Russification  of  the  various  members  of  the 
union.  Finally  a  fraction  was  born  to  Panslav- 
ism under  Koshelev,  who  withdrew  his  consent 
to  the  Russification  of  the  Poles,  and  demanded 
a  new  constitution  for  Russia. 

A  remarkable  feature  of  the  Panslavistic  sen- 
timent was  the  federative  idea  which  underlay 
it.  Herzen,  for  example,  planned  a  separation 
from  Russia  of  the  Caucasus,  the  Baltic  prov- 
inces, and  Finland.  Others  contemplated  Polish 
and  Little  Russian  autonomy.  The  dream  of 
not  a  few  Panslavists  was  a  federation  of  all  the 
12 


y 


178  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

Slav  nationalities.  And  this  idea  of  federation 
directly  connected  the  movement  with  the  re- 
volt, since  it  was  a  reversion  to  the  federative 
principle  of  old  Slav  life.  We  shall  see  later 
how  it  was  utilized  and  developed  by  the  oppo- 
nents of  the  unified  empire. 


MYSTICISM  AND   PESSIMISM. 


It  now  becomes  necessary,  before  the  story  of 
the  revolt  can  be  resumed,  to  consider  certain 
psychological  phenomena  due  to  the  oppressive 
conditions  of  the  individual  and  national  devel- 
opment. The  mystical  tendencies  of  thought 
in  Russia  seem  to  have  first  declared  themselves 
on  religious  ground,  but  their  later  manifesta- 
tions have  invaded  all  fields  of  intellectual  life 
and  literary  labor.  Mysticism,  the  reader  will 
remember,  has  worn  innumerable  garbs  and  re- 
ceived multifarious  definitions.  It  has  been 
called  theopathetic,  theosophic,  theurgic.  It 
has  been  discovered  in  the  Vedas,  in  the  doc- 
trines of  Plato,  and  the  philosophy  of  Hegel. 
In  the  Middle  Ages  we  see  it  as  u  purification," 
"  illumination,"  "  ecstatic  union,"  and  "  absorp- 
tion." Sometimes  it  is  pantheistic,  sometimes 
theistic.  Strictly  speaking,  it  is  an  internal  il- 
lumination, a  supersensual  exaltation,  an  as- 
cribing of  objective  existence  to  the  subjective 
creations  of  the  mind.  But  the  name  has  also 
been  given  to  morbid  tendencies  to  the  myste- 


v/ 


180  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

rious,  and  to  the  play  of  the  fancy  in  the  realm 
of  the  spiritual  or  ghostly.  In  the  individual 
the  mystical  condition  may  be  produced  by  some 
striking  experience,  —  by  a  crushing  disappoint- 
ment, by  world-weariness,  by  the  discovery  of 
some  truth.  It  may  arise  in  deep  melancholy, 
still  of tener  out  of  despair.  Yet,  with  depres- 
sion for  its  exciting  cause,  it  appears  only  in  the 
form  of  reaction.  The  mind  seems  to  triumph 
over  its  old  state  by  a  sense  of  exclusiveness  and 
exaltation,  a  consciousness  of  special  endow- 
ment, sanctity,  or  knowledge.  Mysticism,  as  a 
national  trait,  is  produced  by  oppressive  condi- 
tions of  national  life ;  mysticism  in  religion 
arises  out  of  dry  and  lifeless  formalism.  Yet, 
in  whatever  guise  it  may  present  itself,  mysti- 
cism is  ever  the  result  of  irritation,  and  always 
assumes  an  attitude  antithetical  to  authority, 
whether  the  dogmas  opposed  be  theological  or 
political. 

Russia  is  by  no  means  the  only  country  of 
Europe  in  which  mystical  tendencies  have  given 
their  color  to  intellectual  life  and  religious  move- 
ments. Spain  had  her  mystical  reaction  after 
the  crushing  of  constitutional  and  religious  free- 
dom by  Charles  and  his  son  Philip.  Germany 
affords  a  still  more  conspicuous  example  in  the 
mysticism  of  the  "  Sturm  und  Drang  "  period. 
A  whole  nation's  longing  for  liberty,  for  full- 


MYSTICISM  AND  PESSIMISM.  181 

ness  of  knowledge,  for  the  lost  simplicity  and 
delights  of  childhood,  were  nowhere  so  well  ex- 
pressed as  in  "  Faust,"  that  most  mystical  of  all 
Goethe's  literary  work.  By  turns,  or  yielding 
to  a  common  impulse,  other  countries  than 
Spain  and  Germany  also  had  their  mystical 
periods.  Yet  there  is  a  fundamental  difference 
between  the  mysticism  of  Russia  and  that  of 
western  Europe.  The  former  is  chronic  ;  the 
latter  acute.  This,  as  we  know  it  in  literature, 
is  long  ago  dead ;  that  was  never  more  vital 
than  it  is  to-day.  West  European  mysticism 
may  be  called  a  phenomenon;  Russian  mysti- 
cism is  essentially  a  growth. 

The  first  considerable  appearance  of  mysticism 
in  Russia  took  place  simultaneously  with  the  / 
development  of  dissent  from  the  raskol.  It  was 
the  peculiarity  of  the  mystical  sects  of  the 
eighteenth  century  that  they  found  converts  ex- 
clusively amongst  the  peasants,  and  sprang  up 
in  parts  of  the  country  separated  from  each  other 
by  great  distances.  Mystical  dissent  appeared 
not  only  in  the  southern  provinces,  but  in  Fin- 
land, in  the  Caucasus,  at  Moscow,  Kaluga,  even 
in  Irkutsk  and  Kamschatka.  These  facts  show 
—  unless  intellectual  tendencies,  like  plant  seeds, 
can  be  scattered  by  the  wind  —  that  Russian  \ 
mysticism  was  a  purely  native  growth,  having 
no  sort  of  relation  or  connection  with  the  Ana- 


J 


182  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

baptism  or  Quakerism  of  the  west.  Its  most 
pronounced  features  seem  to  have  found  expres- 
sion in  the  Dukhobortsy  sect,  to  which  reference 
has  already  been  made.  The  great  mystic  and 
leader  of  this  body  was  Kapustin,  who,  proceed- 
ing from  illumination  to  illumination,  at  last 
declared  himself  to  be  Christ,  and  was  wor- 
shiped as  such  by  his  followers.  Kapustin 
reasoned  in  this  wise  :  "  Has  not  Jesus  said,  ■  I 
shall  remain  with  you  till  the  end  of  time?' 
Thus  from  century  to  century,  descending  from 
generation  to  generation,  the  divine  soul  of 
Christ  has  resided  in  a  succession  of  men  in 
whom,  during  its  temporary  sojourn  in  the  im- 
perfect body  of  a  child  of  man,  it  has  conserved 
the  remembrance  and  consciousness  of  its  divine 
extraction.  During  the  first  centuries  of  Chris- 
tianity this  truth  was  known  to  all  men.  At 
first  the  man  in  whom  the  soul  of  Christ  resided 
was  the  Pope,  but  there  came  false  Popes. 
Christ  has  said,  '  There  shall  be  many  called 
and  few  chosen.'  "  The  chosen,  according  to 
Kapustin,  were  the  Dukhobortsy. 

Such,  indeed,  was  the  mental  tension  out  of 
which  dissent  arose  in  Russia  that  there  is 
scarcely  a  sect  in  existence  to-day  in  the  dogmas 
of  which  mystical  leanings  are  not  discernible. 
The  conditions  of  Russian  life  in  the  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries  had  lain  upon 


t 


MYSTICISM  AND  PESSIMISM.  183 

minds  and  hearts  with  so  heavy  a  weight  that 
the  people  were  glad  to  fly  for  relief  to  the  wild- 
est dreams,  to  the  strangest  faiths,  to  the  most 
fantastic  illusions  which  highly  wrought  relig- 
ious ingenuity  could  invent.  The  Tatar  domi- 
nation was  long  over,  but  a  new  domination 
had  arisen,  more  powerful  and  more  relentless, 
of  wider  range,  of  deeper  humiliation.  The 
more  centralized  the  state  became,  the  heavier 
had  grown  the  fiscal  burdens  of  the  people ;  the 
greater  the  autocracy  at  the  summit  of  national 
life,  the  greater  the  enslavement  at  its  base. 
Nor  was  there  any  sufficing  help  for  this  state 
of  things  in  the  ministrations  of  the  Greek 
Church.  Minds  that  found  it  a  source  of  light 
and  life  during  the  dark  hours  of  the  Mongol 
oppression  now  looked  vainly  for  consolation  to 
the  national  faith.  Its  assumption  of  authority, 
its  alliance  with  the  civil  power,  its  Byzantine 
elements,  all  prepared  it  for  the  rashol.  But 
it  was  the  dreary,  lifeless  formalism  of  its  wor- 
ship that  sharpened  the  dissenter's  longing  for 
a  freer  and  more  vital  spiritual  activity  than 
any  that  it  could  attain  within  the  limits  of  au- 
thority and  tradition. 

In  religious  soil  Russian  mysticism  bore  abun- 
dant fruit,  and  is  active  as  an  element  of  dissent 
to  this  day.  We  also  see  it  in  the  "  men  of 
God  "  of  the  political  propagandas  and  conspira*-^*^ 


184  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

cies  of  1873.  But  it  was  destined  to  occupy  a 
still  wider  field.  Waiting  on  the  new  culture 
from  Europe  it  gave  its  color  to  some  of  the 
earliest  productions  of  the  national  literature. 
Scarcely  a  single  Russian  writer  of  note  is  alto- 
gether free  from  the  wider  tendencies  of  mysti- 
cism ;  not  a  few  have  manifested  the  quality  in  a 
degree  highly  marked.  Pushkin  had  an  espe- 
cial fondness  for  the  weird  and  spiritual  elements 
of  the  national  legends.  Gogol,  with  a  predilec- 
tion for  the  fantastic  not  less  pronounced,  be- 
came a  confirmed  mystic  in  his  later  years.  The 
Russian  painter,  Ivanov,  surrendered  himself 
completely  to  religious  mysticism.  Some  of  the 
later  works  of  the  novelist  Dostoyevsky,  nota- 
bly "  The  Brothers  Karamasov,"  are  mystical 
to  the  point  of  saturation.  That  strange  story, 
"  Clara  Milich,"  written  by  Turgeniev  not  very 
long  before  his  death,  is  pure  mysticism.  It 
raises  a  singular  issue,  and  decides  it  in  the 
affirmative ;  that  is  to  say,  Can  love  enter  the 
living  heart  and  influence  the  emotional  nature 
after  the  object  of  it  has  been  committed  to  the 
grave  ?  Another  example  is  afforded  by  Count 
Leo  Tolstoi, 1  the  author  of  that  much  admired 
novel,  "  War  and  Peace  "  (Vaind  i  Mir),  who 
quite  recently,  in  a  fit   of  religious  exaltation, 

1  Not  to  be  confounded  with  the  late  minister  of  Public  Instruc- 
tion, Count  Dmitri  Andreyevich  Tolstoi. 


MYSTICISM  AND  PESSIMISM.  185 

pronounced  his  literary  works  idle  and  sinful. 
Destroying  his  poems,  the  Count  began  the  com- 
position of  a  work  on  the  teachings  of  Jesus 
Christ,  with  a  lengthy  introduction  narrating 
his  own  religious  experiences.  On  the  comple- 
tion of  the  book  it  was  "  prohibited  "  by  the 
Holy  Synod,  the  result  being  that  only  a  frag- 
ment of  it  has  obtained  circulation  in  Russia. 
The  mystical  element  is  strong  throughout. 
The  introduction1  narrates  the  author's  struggles 
to  solve  the  problem  of  his  own  life,  his  despair 
and  leaning  to  suicide,  his  final  questioning  of 
religion,  and  "  illumination." 

The  case  of  Count  Tolstoi,  in  harmony  with 
all  available  evidence  on  the  subject,  shows  that 
the  tendency  to  mysticism  is  one  which  invari- 
ably manifests  itself  late  in  life,  or  at  any  rate 
grows  more  pronounced  with  increasing  years. 
This  coincidence  of  the  individual  process  with 
the  racial  and  historic  process  is  of  itself  evi- 
dence that  neither  in  the  one  case  nor  in  the 
other  is  the  phenomenon  any  mere  accident,  but 
a  part  of  the  national  life  and  a  result  of  its 
conditions. 

It  is,  at  the  same  time,  true  that  a  complex 
mental  condition  like  mysticism  can  only  have 
a  limited  field  of  activity  and  manifestation. 
The  tendency  really  universal  in  Russia  is  to  i 

1  Printed  at  length  in  the  Obshcheyay  Dyelo,  No.  57. 


186  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

pessimism.  This  penetrates  all  spheres  of 
thought,  gives  its  hues  to  every  coterie  and 
school,  creates  resemblances  between  the  most 
diverse  productions  of  the  pen,  restores  as  with 
a  bond  of  -gloom  the  shattered  solidarity  of  so- 
ciety, and  between  human  beings  separated  by* 
impassable  gulfs  of  rank  and  position  stretches 
a  connecting  lin^k  of  dreary  despondency  and 
common  despair.  Mysticism  enters  readily  into 
composition  with  some  elements  ;  with  others 
it  is  uncompromisingly  irreconcilable.  Pessi- 
mism goes  everywhere,  combines  with  every- 
thing. Not  to  be  pessimistic  in  Russia  is  to  be 
divorced  from  all>contact  and  sympathy  with 
the  national  life; to  be  cut' off,  either  by  foreign 
birth  or  by  some  monstrous  denial  of  nature, 
from  the  tree  of  the  national  development.  AIL 
influences  and  epochs  have  contributed  to  the 
tendency.  A  monotonous  landscape,  the  loss 
of  free  institutions,  Byzantinism  with  its  cruel 
law-giving  and  ascetic  tyranny,  the  fiscal  bur- 
dens of  the  new'  state,  the  antitheses  suggested 
by  European  culture,  the  crushing  of  the  indi- 
vidual, the  elimination  from  Russian  life  of  all 
those  healthy  activities  which^  engage  citizen- 
ship in  other  countries,  the  harassing  restric- 
tions upon  thought  and  movements,  the  state- 
created  frivolities  of  society,  —  all  these  have 
contributed  to  the  gloom  of  the  mental  atmo-. 


MYSTICISM   AND  PESSIMISM.  187 

sphere  until  today  pessimism  may  be  said  to 
be  the  normal  condition  of  all  Russian  thought. 
In  religion  it  produced,  as  in  the  Zhivniye  Po- 
koiniki  sect,  assertions  of  the  evil  of  existence 
and  the  misfortune  of  birth.  In  literature  it 
has  given  its  tone  to  the  finest  efforts  of  the 
poet  arid  the  novelist.  The  lives  of  Pushkin, 
Lermontov,  Gogol,  Dostoyevsky,  and  many 
others  of  Russia's  greatest  men  were  passed  in 
a  perpetual  struggle  with  the  pessimistic  ten- 
dency. It  was  Lermontov  who  called  life  a 
"  stupid,  empty  jest."  When  Pushkin  had  read 
a  few  pages  of  Gogol's  "  Dead  Souls  "  he  ex- 
claimed, "  My  God,  how  sad  our  Russia  is !  " 
Herzen  doubted  whether  it  was  possible  for  any 
Russian  to  be  genuinely  merry.  He  called  the 
Russian  laugh  a  ricanement  maladif.  Dostoyev- 
sky spoke  of  ideas  themselves  being  in  pain, 
like  patients.1  And  Nekrassov,  a  true  poet  of 
the  people,  heard  everywhere  the  voice  of  the 
national  woe :  — 

M  Where  moaneth  not  the  Russian  man? 
In  the  fields  he  groans  and  in  the  roads,  • 
And  in  the  mines,  and  on  the  railways; 

He  groans  in  the  telega,  nightly  journeying  through  the  steppe, 
And  in  his  own  miserable  little  cottage." 

Or  the  Volga  itself  is  made  conscious  of  the 
ubiquitous  pessimism  :  — 

"Volga,  O  Volga !    In  spring  many- watered ! 
What  groan  ascends  from  thee,  great  Russian  river? 

1  In  Byedniye  Lyudi  (Poor  People). 


188  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

That  groan  we  call  it  singing ; 
There  burlaki  the  hawser  pull- 
But,  Volga,  thou  dost  not  the  fields  so  inundate 
With  thy  broad  waters  as  this  people's  sorrow, 
This  might}'  woe,  fills  all  our  Russian  land."  * 

"  Russian  sadness  "  —  russky  pechal,  as  Ne- 
krassov  called  it  —  invades  all  the  inner  life  of 
the  people.  Yet  it  is  singularly  unobtrusive  in 
social  spheres.  I  know  of  no  altruism  more 
agreeable  than  this  power  which  Russians  have 
of  separating  themselves  from  the  interests  of 
their  own  individuality,  in  order  that  they  may 
contribute  gaiety  and  liveliness  to  the  general 
enjoyment,  —  this  <  cheerful  insouciance  below 
which,  sacrificed  to  the  social  exigencies  of  the 
moment,  melancholy,  sorrow,  all  depths  of  de- 
spair may  lie  hidden.  It  is  this  versatility  that 
constitutes  the  chief  charm  of  Russian  society  • 
But  the  Russian  has  his  inner  as  well  as  his 
outer  world,  and  between  the  two  stretches 
a  distance  relatively  immense.  The  outer  is 
shown  to  strangers  and  acquaintances ;  with 
the  inner  only  Intimates  and  relatives  come 
into  contact.  Hence  the  ease  with  which  the 
Russian  nature  is  misunderstood,  or  only  inad- 
equately comprehended,  by  foreigners.  Hence, 
also,  the  inevitable  failure  of  all  attempts  to 
explore  the  Russian  mind  or  the  Russian  coun- 
try, with  only  French  or  German  for  one's  in- 
terpreter. 

1  From  Razmyshleniya  u  narodnova  padyezda. 


MYSTICISM  AND  PESSIMISM.  189 

Is  it  not  the  Russians  rather  than  the  Eng- 
lish who  take  their  pleasures  sadly  ?  Even  in 
the  village  festivals,  the  liveliest  of  all  Russian 
popular  out-door  enjoyments,  there  is  a  lack  of 
earnest  merry-making,  a  want  of  boisterous  joy- 
fulness  and  abandon,  almost  a  shrinking  from 
relaxation  and  amusement,  that  leave  a  painful 
impression  in  the  mind  of  the  sensitive  specta- 
tor. I  never  looked  upon  one  of  these  festivals 
without  thinking  of  the  women  who,  as  Herber- 
stein  tells  us,  were  permitted  at  certain  times 
of  the  year,  "  as  a  special  gratification,"  to  meet 
each  other  outside  Moscow  "  in  a  very  pleasant 
meadow."  The  prohibitions  of  the  "Domos- 
troi "  linger  about  the  gathering ;  men  and. 
women  alike  seem  in  doubt  whether  they  have 
a  right,' or  can  afford,  to  be  happy;  only  the 
children  can  be  said  to  enjoy  themselves,  for 
they  represent  the  early  period  of  Slav  history, 
the  time  in  which  the  people  were  the  free  arbi- 
ters of  their  own  destinies.  This  half-fatalistic 
fear  of  happiness,  or,  let  us  say,  of  the  mere 
phantom  of  it,  somewhat  in  the  spirit  of  the 
German  lines,  — 

"Oh,  Freude,  habe  Acht! 
Sprich  leise, 
Dass  nicbt  der  Schmerz  erwacht !  " 

is  also  noticed  in  the  cities.     On  public  holi- 
days, or  days  of  so-called  national  rejoicing,  the 


190  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

crowds  which  closed  factories  and  places  of 
business  dismiss  to  the  streets  wear  a  gloomy 
and  spiritless  aspect  utterly  out  of  harmony 
with  the  idea  of  out-door  enjoyment.  On  the 
other  hand,  rejoicings  by  ukaz,  in  celebration  of 
events  imperial  rather  than  popular  in  their  in- 
terest, call  forth  a  most  ludicrous  half-hearted- 
ness  on  the  part  of  those  who  participate  in 
them. 

A  full  harvest  of  pessimism  may  be  gathered 
by  the  quiet  eye  of  a  stroller  through  the  pub- 
lic gardens  of  any  of  the  large  Russian  cities. 
One  of  the  finest  of  these  resorts  is  the  Lyay- 
tny  Sad,  or  Summer  Garden,  in  St.  Peters- 
burg, —  a  spot  of  green  that  in  warm  weather 
daily  attracts  thousands  of  visitors,  and  remains 
full  of  music  and  pedestrians  until  long  after 
midnight.  Here  the  crowd  is  strangely  sub- 
dued in  its  manner.  Everybody  seems  ab- 
sorbed in  his  own  reflections.  Army  officer, 
student,  chinovnik,  governess,  all  wear  the  same 
aspect  of  serious  gravity.  Couples  pass  along 
without  seeming  to  converse ;  before  the  or- 
chestra hundreds  sit  listening,  or  promenade 
through  the  allSe  amid  a  silence  unrelieved  by 
a  solitary  laugh.  Dress  deepens  the  prevailing 
gloom,  since  it  is  characterized  by  a  striking 
lack  of  color,  most  of  the  women  being  attired 
in  black.     A  cemetery  migEtfurnish  more  con- 


MYSTICISM  AND  PESSIMISM.  191 

vincing  proofs  of  the  vanity  of  life,  yet  it  could 
scarcely  attract  a  crowd  more  mournful  than 
that  which  goes  its  sad,  mechanical  rounds  on 
summer  nights  in  the  Lyaytny  Sad. 

There  is  also  a  noticeable  pessimism  in  nearly 
all  Russian  music  of  a  popular  or  national  char- 
acter. A  strange  plaintiveness,  increased  by 
frequent  resort  to  the  minor  key,  is  heard  in 
countless  songs  of  the  people  ;  the  effect  is 
often  so  peculiar  that  it  is  difficult  to  express  it 
even  in  notes.  The  saddest  of  these  melodies 
are  sung  by  students  at  their  gatherings  in  the 
university  towns ;  the  weirdest,  perhaps,  take 
the  form  of  recitative  and  chorus,  heard  mostly 
among  the  peasants  and  common  people  of  the 
country  districts.  And  if  Russian  music  is  sad, 
Russian  street  cries  are  infinitely  sadder.  Any- 
thing so  mournful  as  these  I  never  heard. 
Hour  after  hour,  day  after  day,  with  the  win- 
dow of  my  apartment  in  the  Troitsky  Pereulok 
open  upon  the  quadrangle  below,  have  I  lis- 
tened to  the  voice  of  the  vender.  Sometimes 
it  was  a  youth,  but  oftener  a  man  or  an  old 
woman,  and  always  the  impression  has  been  the 
same.  It  was  a  cry,  and  yet  it  seemed  a  song. 
And  such  a  song  !  Heart-piercing  it  was,  and 
sank  into  one's  soul.  It  was  a 'shriek  of  pain, 
an  exclamation  of  anguish,  a  wail  of  despair. 
It  had  a  life  independent  of  the  singer.     The 


192  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

vender  might  go  with  his  basket  of  wares  and 
return  no  more,  but  the  lamentation  was  always 
rising,  and  remained  ever  the  same.  No  single 
human  being,  however  miserable,  I  used  to 
think,  could  have  composed  it ;  nor  was  it  the 
product  of  any  guild,  or  locality,  or  even  epoch. 
To  me  it  seemed  the  rhythmic  utterance  of  cen- 
turies of  suffering.  I  saw  in  it,  I  heard  in  it, 
only  the  accumulated  burden  of  the  people's 
"woe  condensed  into  a  single  cry  of  anguish, 
and  that  cry  committed  to  the  keeping  of  the 
wretched  and  the  miserable  for  all  time. 


THE   DYNAMIC   PERIOD. 


The  despotism  of  Nicholas  ushered  in  a  new 
era  for  the  revolt.  The  movement  widened  and 
deepened.  From  being  the  affair  of  a  mere 
coterie,  it  began  to  occupy  all  classes  of  edu- 
cated society.  It  rose  to  the  dignity  of  parties. 
It  brought  the  Liberal,  the  Nihilist,  the  Social- 
ist, the  Revolutionist,  the  Terrorist,  one  after 
another,  into  the  arena.  Its  newspapers  ap- 
peared and  were  circulated  through  Russia  in 
tens  of  thousands.  It  established  its  Vehmge- 
richt ;  it  carried  on  its  propagandas  ;  it  com- 
passed against  absolutism  the  most  deadly 
assaults  known  in  the  history  of  political  con- 
spiracy. That  three  decades  should  have  suf- 
ficed for  the  maturing  of  a  movement  so  terrible 
in  its  methods,  so  inexhaustible  in  its  resources, 
so  indomitable  in  its  spirit,  —  should,  moreover, 
have  witnessed  its  triumph  over  all  the  repres- 
sive means  which  Asian  and  European  civiliza- 
tion could  array  against  it,  —  shows  abundantly 
that  the  country  was  already  ripe  for  the  out- 
break when  Nicholas  called  it  into  being. 

13 


fr 


194  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

Individualism  opened  the  new  period  with  a 
bitter  and  cynical  reaction  against  the  moral 
and  social  obligations.  It  aimed  at  being  a  law 
to  itself.  It  repudiated  all  dogma  and  tradi- 
tion. In  the  religious  domain  it  championed 
materialism  ;  to  morals  it  gave  a  utilitarian  ba- 
sis ;  social  standards  it  rejected  outright.  It 
was  a  gospel  of  pure  negation  in  which,  while 
men  sought  freedom  for  their  individuality, 
women  thronged  to  the  schools  and  universities 
in  quest  of  the  means  of  independence.  Much 
has  been  said  to  show  that  at  first  this  nihilistic 
movement  had  no  political  character,  and  yet 
all  its  protests  were  aimed  at  the  principles  and 
traditions  which  lay  at  the  foundation  of  the 
Russian  state.  At  bottom  it  was  the  same  re- 
volt against  authority  as  that  of  the  dissenters 
in  the  days  of  Nikon.  And  from  a  negation  of 
moral,  religious,  and  philosophical  principles  it 
rapidly  progressed  to  the  negation  of  dogmas 
in  politics. 

Socialistic  doctrines  had  already  gained  a 
footing  in  Russia  when  the  young  adherents  of 
Slavophilism  met  to  discuss  philosophy  in  Mos- 
cow. The  interest  awakened  in  the  writings  of 
Louis  Blanc,  Proudhon,  St.  Simon,  Owen,  and 
Fourier  led  in  time  to  the  formation  of  certain 
associations,  the  members  of  which  met  to  dis- 
cuss  passing  events  and   literary  productions. 


THE  DYNAMIC  PERIOD.  195 

Some  of  these  societies  gradually  assumed  a  po- 
litical character,  giving  birth  to  what  is  known 
as  the  Petrashevsky  conspiracy ;  but  on  the 
breaking  up  of  that  organizatiop  in  1848  by  the 
police,  most  of  the  associations  collapsed. 

For  a  few  years  longer  Nicholas  maintained 
the  iron  system  which  is  associated  with  his 
name,  and  then  it  fell,  and  great  was  the  fall 
thereof.'  The  year  in  which  Alexander  II.  suc- 
ceeded to  the  throne  brought  new  champions  to 
the  side  of  the  revolt.  At  home  Chernishevsky 
preached  political  economy  and  a  £uarded*form 
of  socialism  in  the  "  Sovremennik ;  "  abroad, 
Herzen,  from  his  printing-press  in  London,  thun- 
dered against  the  vices  of  Russian  absolutism. 
The  new  emperor  himself  posed  as  a  reformer. 
His  address  to  the  people  at  the  close  of  the 
Crimean  War  excited  the  wildest  hopes.  A 
national  springtime  seemed  at  hand.  The  fet- 
ters fell  from  the  press.  Thought  was  set  free. 
Everybody  hastened  to  declare  himself  a  Lib- 
eral. Such  was  the  fever  of  the  time,  such 
the  relief  from  the  nightmare  of  the  previous 
regime,  that  even  immature  youths  in  the  ed- 
ucational establishments  felt  themselves  moved 
to  prepare  new  schemes  of  reform.1 
^  That  a  reaction  of  disappointment  would  fol- 
low was  inevitable.     The  reforms  which  were 

1  Mentioned  bv  Eckardt. 


196  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

in  everybody's  head  had  no  place  in  the  schemes 
.  of  the  emperor  himself.  It  soon  became  clear 
that  there  would  be  no  radical  concession  to  the 
revolt.  The  authorities  even  undertook  to  re- 
strict discussion  of  the  changes  decided  upon. 
The  marshal  of  nobles  in  the  government  of 
Tver  was  exiled  for  having  permitted  a  debate 
on  the  subject.  Finally  came  the  act  of  1861. 
The  serfs,  who  had  been  attached  to  the  glebe 
in  the  interests  of  the  state,  were  now,  alike  in 
the  interests  of  the  state,  invested  with  the 
rights  of  free  cultivators,  it  having  been  found, 
as  M.  Rambaud  justly  observes,  "  that  a  people 
in  which  the  majority  of  the  agricultural  classes 
was  subjected  to  serfage  could  not  rival  the 
European  nations  in  intellectual,  scientific,  or 
industrial  progress." 

But  the  act  of  1861,  however  desirable,  neces- 
sary, or  inevitable,  did  not  wholly  satisfy  the 
peasants,1  Vor  did  it,  even  supplemented  by  the 
judicial  and  administrative  reforms  which  fol- 
lowed, meet  the  highest  wishes  of  the  country. 
It  was  so  far  from  being  a  concession  to  the  re- 
volt that  its  immediate  effect  was  to  intensify 
the  movement  against  absolutism.  The  reac- 
tionary steps  which  followed  added  fuel  to  the 

v;  J/ A  hundred  of  the  protesting  serfs,  the  reader  will  remember, 
were  forcibly  emancipated  by  one  of  Alexander's  officers,  General 
Apraxin.    He  shot  them. 


THE  DYNAMIC  PERIOD.  197 

flames.  The  government  at  first  confined  itself 
to  harassing  the  student  classes  by  withdraw- 
ing from  them  the  right  of  assembly  and  asso- 
ciation. The  outbreaks  which  followed  were 
repressed  with  characteristic  severity.  In  the 
same  year  a  secret  society,  composed  of  army 
officers,  issued  an  address  to  the  emperor  de- 
manding for  Russia  constitutional  government, 
for  Poland  complete  freedom  and  self-rule.  The 
nobles  also  began  to  agitate  for  a  share  in  polit- 
ical power.  In  1862  the  authorities  closed  all 
the  clubs  and  reading  circles  known  to  be  in 
the  service  of  the  revolt.  Amongst  the  insti- 
tutions thus  attacked  were  a  large  number  of 
Sunday-schools  in  which  the  propaganda  had 
been  carried  on.  The  "  Sovremennik  "  was 
suspended,  and  Chernishevsky *  thrown  into 
prison. 

Thereupon  followed  the  Polish  insurrection 
of  1863.  As  the  smoke  of  that  outbreak  cleared 
away  new  methods  and  machinery  of  aggression 
were  seen  to  be  in  possession  of  the  revolt.  A 
number  of  clubs  had  sprung  up  in  various  parts 
of  the  country,  ostensibly  for  educational  and 
philanthropic  purposes,  but  really  to  facilitate 
propaganda.     Amongst  these  were  the  Pensa 

1  "Pardoned  "  in  1883,  and  permitted  to  return  to  Europe  after 
nineteen  years  of  exile  in  Siberia.  At  present  in  Astrakhan,  un- 
der close  police  surveillance,  practically  a  prisoner. 


198  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

Club,  founded  in  1861,  and  the  Zemlya  i  Volya 
(Land  and  Liberty)  organization,  established  a 
year  later.  Simultaneously  with  the  club  move- 
ment came  a  systematic  distribution  of  contra- 
band literature,  smuggled  across  the  frontier  by 
Sergei  Kovalek  and  others,  amongst  artisans 
in  the  towns  and  peasants  in  the  country  dis- 
tricts. The  personal  work  of  the  propaganda 
was  mainly  carried  on  by  Ishutin  Khudyakov, 
Prince  Cherkesov,  Karakasov,  Yurassov,  and 
Sagibalov. 

For  three  years  the  revolt  gave  no  other 
sign.  Then  a  bolt  fell  from  the  blue.  On  the 
4th  (16th)  of  April,  1866,  Karakasov,  as  dele- 
gate of  one  of  the  clubs,  fired  at  the  emperor  as 
the  latter  was  leaving  the  Summer  Garden  on 
the  Neva  side.  The  attempt  failed.  The  rep- 
resentative of  absolutism  owed  his  life  to  the 
promptitude  of  a  peasant.  Yet  the  conspiracy 
had  an  immediate  and  important  effect  upon 
the  general  agitation.  It  has  always  been  the 
lot  of  the  revolt  to  profit  by  its  own  excesses, 
and  so  the  effect  of  J£arakasov's  shot  was  genu- 
inely cumulative;  (,  The  government  entered 
upon  a  policy  of  reaction  that  not  only  drove 
many  outsiders  into  the  movement  who  would 
otherwise  have  remained  aloof  from  it,  but  gave 
the  theoretical  nihilism  of  the  time  a  turn  that 
was  to  bear  serious  fruit  at  no  distant  date. 


THE  DYNAMIC  PERIOD.  199 

An  imperial  rescript  declared  order,  property, 
and  religion  imperiled,  —  though  the  real  danger 
was  the  danger  to  absolutism,  —  and  Count  Tols- 
toi, called  to  the  Ministry  of  Public  Instruction, 
at  once  devised  and  carried  into  effect  a  scheme 
for  harassing  the  youth  of  the  schools  and  uni- 
versities. Three  years  later  the  Nechayev  con- 
spiracy was  organized.  Its  leading  spirit,  with 
the  help  of  funds  obtained  in  Geneva,  aimed  at 
a  general  rising  of  an  anarchical  character. 
For  a  time  the  preparations  went  forward  with- 
out interference,  but  on  Nechayev  using  his  in- 
fluence to  procure  the  murder  of  a  conspirator 
deemed  "  unsafe,"  the  police  broke  up  the  or- 
ganization, and  out  of  three  hundred  participa- 
tors, a  number  were  punished,  including  Ne- 
chayev1 himself. 

The  revolt  now  drifted  into  a  new  policy.  Of 
the  puerilities  of  mere  negation  every  one  had 
grown  heartily  tired.  A  practical  activity  was 
needed,  of  which  the  results  should  be  positive 
and  substantial.  Hitherto  the  agitation  had 
been  mainly  confined  to  the  towns.  Gradu- 
ally the  conviction  came  that  the  country  at 
large  must  be  invited  to  take  part  in  the  under- 
mining of  absolutism.  What  could  a  handful 
of  conspirators,  however  energetic,  hope  to  ac- 

1  Sentenced  in  1872  to  hard  labor  in  the  mines,  but  said  to  be 
still  confined  in  the  Alexeyev  Ravelin  at  St.  Petersburg. 


-fc 


200  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

complish  against  a  principle  supported  by  the 
loyalty  of  fifty  millions  of  peasants  ?  On  the 
other  hand,  everything  was  to  be  hoped  from 
the  sympathies  and  participation  of  the  people. 
In  this  way  and  under  the  stimulus  given  to  it 
by  the  secret  press,  now  driven  abroad,  but  there 
powerfully  inspired  by  Bakunin  and  Lavrov, 
the  revolt  entered  upon  its  socialistic  phase. 
Thereupon  began  a  movement  which,  whether 
one  regards  its  character,  the  aims  which  in- 
spired it,  the  forces  which  it  commanded,  and 
the  sacrifices  it  involved,  or  the  cruel  disap- 
pointment in  which  it  ended,  must  be  pro- 
nounced to  have  no  parallel  in  history,  and  to 
have  been  only  possible  to  the  Russian  country 
and  the  Russian  people.  No  sooner  had  the 
word  gone  forth  that  the  people  were  to  be 
prepared  and  enlightened  for  outbreak  than 
hundreds  of  volunteers  offered  themselves  for 
the  work  of  propaganda.^  Young  people  of  both 
sexes  forsook  the  parental  roof,  or  left  their 
studies  at  school  and  university,  to  hasten  by 
every  road  and  highway  and  river  with  their 
message  of  enlightenment  and  revolt  to  the 
country  districts.  In  order  to  win  over  the  peo- 
ple and  make  the  task  of  tuition  all  the  easier, 
many  of  these  enthusiasts  put  on  peasants' 
attire,  gave  a  blowzed  appearance  to  their  faces 
by  rubbing  them  with  grease,  or  steeped  their 


THE  DYNAMIC  PERIOD.  201 

hands  in  brine  until  they  became  as  rough  and 
hard  as  those  of  the  muzhik  himself. 

Young  men  who  had  been  delicately  brought 
up  learned  the  trade  of  the  blacksmith,  the 
carpenter,  the  shoemaker,  or  the  locksmith,  in 
order  to  come  more  immediately  into  contact 
with  the  artisan  classes ;  young  women  of  the 
best  families  worked  in  the  factories  like  com- 
mon peasants,  or  took  a  share  as  agriculturists 
in  the  labors  of  the  field.  Sometimes  the  prop- 
agandist would  be  a  tutor  in  a  nobleman's 
family,  or  a  governess  engaged  to  teach  lan- 
guages in  the  house  of  a  land-owner,  or  even 
a  woman  doctor,  winning  friends  for  the  cause 
in  the  guise  of  an  accoucheuse. 

The  activity  of  these  apostles  of  the  revolt 
was  twofold.  On  the  one  hand,  the  peasants 
and  artisans  were  stirred  up  to  discontent  by 
vivd  voce  statements  of  the  people's  wrongs  ;  on 
the  other,  they  were  approached  by  means  of 
an  enormous  flying  literature  of  propaganda 
that  took  all  shapes  in  which  it  was  likely  to 
appeal  to  the  agricultural  and  laboring  classes. 
Schools  for  the  propaganda  in  the  guise  of 
workshops  were  founded  in  St.  Petersburg, 
where  Prince  Krapotkin  frequently  gave  lec- 
tures to  the  artisans  in  socialism.  The  propa- 
ganda possessed  similar  machinery  in  Moscow. 
In  the  government  of  Novgorod,  Sophie  Lesch- 


202  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

ern  von  Herzfeld,  daughter  of  an  army  gen- 
eral, started  a  village  school  and  "there  gave 
instruction  to  the  peasants  in  the  principles  of 
the  revolt.  A  smithy  in  the  government  of 
Tver,  kept  by  the  peasant  Paul  Grigoryev, 
served  as  a  place  of  propaganda  for  a  large  dis- 
trict. Centres  for  the  movement  were  also 
formed  by  workshops  in  Yaroslavl  and  Saratov ; 
by  a  gun  factory  in  Tambov ;  schools  in  Cherni- 
gov and  Kamenny-Podolsk  ;  a  farm  in  Kovno ; 
and  clubs  in  Pensa,  Kasan,  Ufa,  Orenburg, 
Nizhni  -  Novgorod,  Kharkov,  Yekaterinoslav, 
Poltava,  and  Kiev.  The  agitation  was  car- 
ried into  every  government  west  of  the  Ural 
range.  The  propagandists  are  said  to  have 
numbered  several  thousands  in  all.  Amongst 
them  were  Enduarov,  the  rich  proprietor  and 
justice  of  the  peace,  of  the  government  of 
Pensa ;  the  wife  of  Golushev,  chief  of  gen- 
darmes at  Orenburg ;  Dukhovsky,  professor  at 
the  Yaroslavl  Lyceum ;  Kotelev,  president  of 
the  government  administration  in  Vyatka ;  Por- 
tugalov,  the  writer ;  Sophie  Subbotina,  a  rich 
land-owner  ;  Sophie  Perovskaya,  daughter  of 
the  General  Governor  of  St.  Petersburg,  and 
niece  of  the  Minister  of  Public   Instruction. 

Some  of  the  propagandists  sacrificed  their 
whole  fortune  to  the  cause,  like  Yermolov,  who 
maintained  several  student  comrades  until  the 


THE  DYNAMIC  PERIOD.  203 

time  was  ripe  for  "  going  to  the  people,"  or  like 
Voinaralsky,  a  justice  of  the  peace,  who  spent 
40,000  rubles  in  furthering  the  agitation.  All 
suffered  the  greatest  hardships.  Yet  despite 
the  enthusiasm,  the  self-sacrifice,  the  energy 
expeficled  upon  it,  the  movement  proved  a  fail- 
ure. Success  was  impossible.  The  people  were 
not  ripe  enough  for  a  revolution.  The  propa- 
gandists were  not  mature  or  experienced  enough 
to  prepare  one.  With  a  simple  faith  even 
more  credulous  than  that  of  the  peasants  whom 
they  hoped  to  convince,  they  neglected  the 
commonest  precautions,  scarcely  concealed  their 
movements  from  the  police,  in  some  cases  al- 
lowed- their  mission  to  become  matter  of  public 
notoriety.  The  authorities  took  early  action 
against  the  propaganda.  Hundreds  were  ar- 
rested and  thrown  into  prison.  (  In  two  years 
the  "  pilgrimage  to  the  people  "  movement  of 
1872-74  was  practically  at  an  end*-**' 

The  next  phase  of  the  agitation  was  to  have 
a  strongly  revolutionary  character.  Tired  of 
preaching  doctrines  which  the  peasant  found  it 
difficult  to  understand,  but  above  all  disap- 
pointed at  the  smallness  of  the  harvest  reaped 
from  so  much  dev6tion,  the  friends  of  the  revolt 
now  applied  their  energies  to  the  fomenting  of 
outbreaks.  A  "  settled "  agitation  took  the 
place  of  the  wandering  propaganda  amongst  the 


204  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

people.  Agents  of  the  revolt  established  them- 
selves in  small  towns,  villages,  and  hamlets,  and 
thence  proceeded  to  excite  the  population  against 
the  authorities.  For  the  purposes  of  agitation 
amongst  the  artisan  class,  unions  and  associa- 
tions, with  revolutionary  aims,  were  formed  in 
St.  Petersburg,  Moscow,  Kiev,  Odessa,  .and  other 
centres v  The  boldest  of  all  these  new.  propa- 
gandists was  Jacob  Vassilyev  Stepn^anovich, 
who  in  1876  organized  a  conspiracy  in  Chigirin, 
government  of  Kiev^that  had  over  a  thousand 
participators,  embracing  the  male  population 
of  about  thirty  villages.  A  day  had  been  fixed 
for  the  rising,  but  the  police,  informed  of  the 
project  through  the  incautiousness  of  the  con- 
spirators themselves,  broke  up  the  organization 
before  it  could  mature  its  plans,  and  lodged 
nine  hundred  of  the  peasants  concerned  in 
prison.  In  the  spring  of  1877  the  members  of 
a  revolutionary  society  called  the  "  Narodniki  " 
(Party  of  the  People)  "  went  to  the  people," 
establishing  a  large  number  of  propaganda  cen- 
tres along  the  line  of  the  Volga. 

But  the  most  terrible  epoch  of  the  revolt  was 
yet  to  come.  The  general  hopelessness  of  the 
prospect,  the  cruel  severity  of  the  government 
reprisals,  the  failure  of  all  milder  measures  to 
ameliorate  the  situation,  drove  the  parties  of  the 
revolution  to  extremes.     In  1878-79  the  revolt 


THE  DYNAMIC  PERIOD.  205 

entered  its  terroristic  period.  Already  in  Sep- 
tember, 1876,  Gorinovich,  the  spy,  had  been  shot 
by  Leiba  Deutsch  in  Odessa.  In  the  same 
month  Tavleyev,  also  a  spy,  fell  the  victim  of 
the  conspirators  whom  he  had  betrayed.  Fiso- 
genov,  a  St.  Petersburg  spy,  was  murdered  in 
the  following  year.  Early  in  1878  the  notori- 
ous Yyera  Sassulich  shot  and  wounded  General 
Trepov,  police  prefect  of  St.  Petersburg,  for  his 
cruel  treatment  of  a  prisoner,  the  student  Bogo- 
lyubov.  The  sixteen-year  old  heroine  of  tfhis 
episode  became  ihe  object  of  a  universal  sympa- 
thy. Vyera  was  acquitted  by  a  jury,  and, 
aided  in  her  escape  from  "  administrative  pro- 
cedure "  by  a  street  crowd,  reached  Switzerland 
in  safety.  Early  in  1878  four  spies  were  shot : 
Nikonov  in  Rostov,  Fetissov  at  Odessa,  and  in 
Moscow  Rosenzweig  and  Reinstein.  Sembrand- 
sky,  of  Kiev,  who  wore  a  coat  of  mail,  escaped, 
but  afterwards  took  his  own  life.  In  the  same 
year  an  attempt  to  take  the  life  of  an  obnoxious 
court  official  named  Kotlyarevsky  in  Kiev  re- 
sulted in  failure.  Baron  Heyking,  chief  of  the 
Kiev  gendarmerie,  fell  in  the  street,  stabbed  to 
the  heart. 

The  repressive  measures  of  the  government 
had  been  growing  in  severity.  The  slightest 
offenses  against  absolutism  were  met  with  the 
most  disproportionate  punishments.    For  an  in- 


206  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

significant  disturbance  in  Kiev,  one  hundred  and 
fifty  students  were  dismissed  from  the  university 
and  thirty  banished  to  a  northern  province. 
The  courts  had  grown  vindictive  and  partisan. 
The  law  of  trial  by  jury  was  daily  ignored.  Pris- 
oners acquitted  by  the  ordinary  processes  were 
systematically  brought  under  administrative 
procedure  and  banished  or  imprisoned  afresh 
without  trial.  The  spy  and  denunciation  system 
had  become  intolerable.  The  crusade  against  the 
revolt  was  carried  on  by  a  secret  and  unscrupu- 
lous organization  of  police,  known  as  the  Third 
Section.  Prison  life  was  unendurable.  Revolts 
broke  out  in  the  Fortress  of  Peter  and  Paul  at  St. 
^Petersburg  and  in  the  central  prison  at  Kharkov. 
/  So  J?adly  were  the  prisoners  fed  in  these  places 
^thati  numbers  of  them  refused  to  partake  of  nour- 
ishment until  a  more  humane  treatment  had 
been  introduced  ;  some  resolved  to  die  of  starva- 
tion, others  had  food  forced  down  their  throats. 
Cumulative  irritations  like  these  worked  minds 
up  to  a  pitch  of  frenzy/  On  the  2d  (14th)  of 
August,  1878,  Kavalsky  was  shot  at  Odessa  by 
order  of  a  military  tribunal.  Two  days  later, 
in  retaliation,  General  Mesentsev,  chief  of  the 
Third  Section,  was  stabbed  to  death  in  the  Nev- 
sky  Prospect  in  full  daylight.  The  reply  of  the 
government  was  to  hand  over  all  political  crimes 
of  violence  to  a  military  tribunal,  to  strengthen 


THE  DYNAMIC  PERIOD.  207 

the  spy  and  repressive  system,  and  to  appeal  to 
society  for  aid  and  sympathy.  A  few  months 
after  the  murder  of  Mesentsev,  the  police  broke 
up  the  Zemlya  i  Volya  Society.  It  was  promptly 
reorganized.  Student  demonstrations  followed 
in  several  of  the  university  towns.  The  pro 
vincial  assemblies  began  to  talk  Liberalism. 
Otherwise,  society  seemed  bound  hand  and  foot. 
Fear  of  the  spy  chilled  conversation  in  the  most 
harmless  gatherings.  General  Drenteln,  suc- 
ceeding Mesentsev,  cast  nearly  two  thousand 
persons  into  prison  in  St.  Petersburg  alone.1  In 
February,  1879,  Prince  Krapotkin,  governor  of 
Kharkov,  was  shot  by  Goldenberg  for  ill  treat- 
ing prisoners  under  his  care.  Two  months  later, 
on  the  2d  (14th)  of  April,  1879,  came  Soloviev's 
attempt  on  the  life  of  the  emperor.  The  would- 
be  assassin  fired  five  shots  at  the  Tsar,  but  none 

of   them    took   effect.     Absolutism    now  fullv 

•j 

awakened  to  its  danger.  The  country  was  di- 
vided into  six  divisions,  and  a  general  governor, 
armed  with  extraordinary  powers,  detailed  to 
each.  The  _pass  system  was  enforced  with  new 
rigors.  In  St.  Petersburg,  General  Gurko  con- 
verted the  dvorniki,  or  house  porters,  into  a 
body  of  spies  charged  with  regular  police  duty. 

1  An  attack  upon  Drenteln  precipitated  the  abolition  of  the 
"Third  Section,"  but  that  organization  was  speedily  reestablished 
under  another  name. 


208  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

The  reply  of  the  revolt  was  characteristic.  In, 
the  summer  of  1879  a  congress  of  socialists,  rev- 
olutionists, and  terrorists  met  at  Voronezh, 
and  there  a  terroristic  activity  was  formally 
resolved  upon.  The  terrible  "  Executive  Com- 
mittee" came  into  existence.  Early  in  August 
sentence  of  death  was  passed  upon  the  Tsar. 
The  conspirators  were  thoroughly  in  earnest. 
Three  mines  were  laid  in  anticipation  of  the 
emperor's  return  journey  from  the  Crimea : 
one  at  Moscow,  the  second  at  Odessa,  and  an- 
other in  Alexandrovsk.  All  the  attempts  failed. 
The  Moscow  explosion,  which  had  been  care- 
fully prepared  by  Hartmann,  Sophie  Per6vskaya, 
Goldenberg,  and  others,  occurred  prematurely. 
The  scene  of  action  was  then  transferred  to  St. 
Petersburg.  Khalturin,  obtaining  service  in 
the  Winter  Palace  as  decorator,  stored  dynamite 
beneath  the  dining-hall ;  the  explosion  thus 
prepared  took  place  on  the  5th  (17th)  of  Feb- 
ruary, 1880.  Ten  men  of  the  watch  were  killed 
and  fifty-three  wounded.  The  emperor,  de- 
layed in  going  to  table,  had  again  escaped.  In 
a  proclamation  which  followed  the  Executive 
Committee  expressed  regret  at  the  death  of  in- 
nocent soldiers,  but  declared  the  determination 
of  the  instigators  to  continue  their  struggle  un- 
til they  had  won  a  constitutional  form  of  gov- 
ernment for  the  country.     The   party  of   the 


THE  DYNAMIC  PERIOD.  209 

"People's  Will"  had,  in  the  mean  time,  come 
into  existence.  In  1880  a  new  and  formidable 
organization,  with  the  Executive  Committee  at 
its  head,  arose  to  carry  into  effect  the  sentence 
passed  at  Voronezh.  It  was  a  system  of  inde- 
pendent decentralized  circles,  destructible  as 
single  entities,  but  collectively  invulnerable : 
forming  a  chain  of  influences  without  visible 
connecting  links  ;  offering  to  members  the  max- 
imum of  scope  for  enterprise  with  the  mini- 
mum of  danger;  worked  by  conspirators  un- 
known to  each  other ;  and  wielded  by  officially 
invisible  leaders  empowered  to  visit  disobedi- 
ence with  the  punishment  of  death.  Early 
in  the  year  1881  the  preparations  were  com- 
pleted. The  emperor  was  to  return  from  a  re- 
view dinner  on  the  1st  (13th)  of  March,  1881. 
He  had  the  choice  of  three  routes ;  one  over 
the  "  Stone  Bridge,"  another  through  the  Ma- 
laya Sadovaya  (Little  Garden)  Street,  a  third 
along  the  Yekaterinsky  Canal.  The  bridge  and 
the  street  were  mined.  The  Tsar  returned  by 
the  canal.  To  the  conspirators  in  waiting  So- 
phie Perovskaya  gave  the  signal  by  waving 
her  handkerchief.  Ryssakov's  bomb  shattered 
the  imperial  carriage;  the  bomb  thrown  by 
Grinevsky  killed  the  emperor. 

A  month  later  Zheliabov,  Perovskaya,  Kibal- 
shchich,  Michailov,  and  Ryssakov  suffered  the 

14 


210  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

penalty  of  death.  The  actual  assassin,  Grinev- 
sky,  had  been  killed  by  the  explosion.  Upon 
Hesse  Helfmann  the  capital  sentence  was  not 
carried  out.  A  reign  of  terror  followed  the 
-event  6f  the  13th  of  March.  The  coronation  of 
Alexander  III.  had  to  be  put  off  for  two  years, 
the  new  emperor  temporarily  retreating  for 
greater  safety  to  Gatchina.  The  terrorists  in  the 
mean  time  continued  their  deadly  activity.  In 
March,  1882,  Strelnikov,  military  procureur  of 
..Odessa,  was  fired  at  and  killed.  Late  in  Decem- 
ber, 1883,  Colonel  Sudeikin,  a  zealous  and  not 
over-scrupulous  police  agent,  fell  assassinated  in 
the  Nevsky  Prospect.  During  the  past  eighteen 
months  numerous  conspiracies,  some  of  them 
aiming  at  regicide,  have  been  brought  to  light. 
At  the  time  of  writing,  an  extensive  propaganda 
has  the  army  for  its  sphere  of  operation ;  agra- 
rian outbreaks  and  risings  are  also  being  fo- 
mented in  the  south  and  west. 

During  the  last  thirty  years  there  have  been 
one  hundred  and  thirty-five  political  prosecu- 
tions in  Russia,  involving  the  arrest  and  punish- 
ment of  1356  persons.  Of  these  a  very  large 
number  were  sentenced  to  hard  labor  in  the 
mines  or  banished  for  life  to  Siberia.  Forty- 
five  of  the  accused  were  either  shot  or  hung: 
five  in  the  reign  of  Nicholas,  thirty-one  under 
Alexander  II.,  and  nine  in  the  reign  of  the 


THE  DYNAMIC  PERIOD.  211 

present  emperor.  During  the  same  period  about 
fifty  political  prisoners  met  their  death  by  vio- 
lence in  the  gaols,  or  while  serving  a  sentence  of 
banishment.  Between  1878  and  1882  the  po- 
lice shot  eighV  persons  during  demonstrations, 
arrests,  etc.  Three  others  took  their  own  lives 
in  order  to  avoid  falling  into  the  hands  of  the  au- 
thorities. The  number  of  persons  thrown^ into 
prison  or  banished  without  preliminary  trial, 
under  the  so-called  "  administrative  procedure," 
is  very  large,  but  cannot  be  stated  with  any  de- 
gree of  certainty.  During  the  past  twenty 
years  about  two  hundred  persons  fled  from  pris- 
ons or  places  of  banishment ;  most  of  them  suc- 
ceeded in  reaching  western  Europe. l 

2  For  a  mass  of  information  concerning  the  dynamic  phases  of 
the  revolt,  see  the  Calendar  of  the  People's  Will  (in  Russian). 
For  readers  of  German,  Professor  Thun's  Geschichte  der  revolu- 
tionaren  Beweyungen  in  Russland  will  be  found  useful. 


PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS. 


Thus  far  the  reader  has  looked  merely  upon 
the  external  features  of  the  dynamic  protest 
against  absolutism  in  Russia.  The  revolt  had 
an  inner,  psychological  side,  best  shown,  per- 
haps, by  a  glance  at  the  personalities  engaged 
in  it.  These  may  be  divided  into  two  classes. 
/The  first  includes  what  I  shall  call  the  literary 
forces  of  the  revolt ;  to  the  second  belong  its 
dynamic  activities.  The  former  category  will 
be  described  in  a  single  illustration.  Instead 
of  again  going  over  the  partly-told  story  of 
the  career  of  Herzen,  who  spent  most  of  his 
life  abroad ;  or  of  giving  an  account  of  Baku- 
nin,  who  was  an  international  rather  than  a 
Russian  agitator,  I  shall  direct  the  reader's 
attention  to  the  litterateur  of  the  revolt,  par 
excellence,  Chernishevsky,  a  man  of  the  people, 
who  labored  for  his  countrymen  on  the  soil  frorn 
which  they  sprang,  and  whose  memory  is  in- 
dissolubly  linked  with  predecessors  in  common 
with  whom  he  spent  the  best  years  of  his  life  in 
that  grave  of  Russian  genius,  Siberia. 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS.         213 

Nikolai  Gavrilovich  Chernishevsky  was  born 
at  Saratov  in  the  year  1829.  His  father,  a 
priest  at  the  local  cathedral,  was  a  man  of  intel- 
lectual gifts,  remarkable  for  his  honesty  and 
uprightness,  an  affectionate  parent,  and  a  warm 
friend.  The  boy  received  his  preliminary  edu- 
cation at  the  Saratov  Ecclesiastical  Seminary, 
and  was  thence  transferred  to  the  university 
of  St.  Petersburg,  where,  a  student  in  its  Phil- 
ological Faculty,  he  applied  himself  with  great 
ardor  and  success  to  the  acquirement  of  the 
Latin,  Greek,  and  Slavic  tongues.  Later,  he 
gave  his  attention  to  socialistic  science,  in 
which  field  his  great  receptivity,  singular  per- 
severance, and  superior  memory  quickly  ranked 
him  as  an  authority  even  amongst  specialists. 
Chernishevsky  completed  his  university  course 
in  1850,  and  thereupon  became  professor  of 
literature  to  the  first  corps  of  cadets.  This 
post  he  gave  up  after  the  lapse  of  a  year  in  re- 
sponse to  the  urgent  entreaties  of  his  mother, 
who  had  a  strong  affection  for  her  son  and  de- 
sired his  presence  in  Saratov.  Once  more  in  his 
native  town  Chernishevsky  became  a  teacher 
in  the  local  gymnasium.  He  occupied  in  his 
father's  house  an  apartment  looking  out  on  the 
Volga ;  here  he  received  his  friends,  and  gath- 
ered round  him  a  circle  of  young  people  who 
became  both  his  pupils  and  his  admirers.      He 


214  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

married  in  1853,  the  same  year  in  which  his 
mother  died.  Returning  to  St.  Petersburg  with 
his  wife,  Nikolai  Gavrilovich  found  himself  in 
the  capital  without  a  copek.  Happily  for  both, 
his  courage  did  not  desert  him.  His  first  effort 
to  keep  the  wolf  from  the  door  resulted  in  a  feat 
which  only  a  Russian  would  have  attempted, 
and  probably  only  a  Russian  could  have  accom- 
plished. Driven  to  translation,  this  born  lin- 
guist acquired  sufficient  English  in  two  months 
to  be  able  at  the  end  of  that  space  of  time  to 
begin  publication  in  the  "Annals  of  the  Fa- 
therland "  of  a  Russian  version  of  a  novel  issued 
in  London.  From  mere  hack  work  he  soon  rose 
to  the  position  of  essay  writer  and  critic,  later 
winning  renown  by  a  brilliant  dissertation  on 
"  The  aesthetic  relation  of  art  to  reality."  It 
was  this  effort  which  led  to  Chernishevsky's  ap- 
pointment as  collaborateur  on  the  staff  of  the  lib- 
eral review,  "  Sovremennik  "  (Contemporary), 
—  a  position  which,  affording  as  it  did  the  full- 
est scope  for  the  critic's  rare  intellectual  gifts, 
gave  Nikolai  Gavrilovich  the  opportunity  for 
which  he  had  long  been  waiting.  Nothing 
could  excel  the  tact  and  ability  with  which  he 
now  applied  himself  to  the  task  of  popularizing 
the  new  ideas.  Essay  after  essay  issued  from 
his  pen,  each  full  of  the  rich  results  of  Western 
economical  science.     The  views  of  Malthus  and 


PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.         215 

the  teachings  of  John  Stuart  Mill  he  made  al- 
most as  familiar  to  his  countrymen  as  they  were 
to  English  readers  of  the  time ;  his  papers  on 
agriculture  and  land-holding  in  Russia  were  of 
especial  value  and  interest.  By  all  classes  his 
writings  were  eagerly  and  widely  read,  and  as 
a  natural  consequence  they  began  to  attract  the 
attention  of  the  government.  "  At  that  time," 
said  Chernishevsky  to  the  writer,  in  Astrakhan, 
more  than  twenty  years  afterwards,  "  1  was 
not  more  —  if  it  be  permitted  to  compare  a 
small  man  with  great  ones  —  than  a  sort  of  Rus- 
sian Cobden  or  Bright.  I  did  not,  moreover, 
always  express  my  own  ideas.  I  had  to  do  a 
good  deal  of  hack  work  in  literature,  and  my 
position  compelled  me  to  live  by  my  pen." 
Modest  as  was  this  ambition,  it  was  too  much 
for  the  Russia  of  those  days.  A  charge  was 
trumped  up  against  Chernishevsky  of  having, 
amongst  other  things,  prepared  a  proclamation 
calling  upon  the  peasants  of  the  crown  to  re- 
volt ;  and  upon  evidence  very  unreliable  and  in- 
adequate, this  promising  litterateur  was  first 
imprisoned  in  St.  Petersburg  for  two  years,  and 
then  sentenced  to  fourteen  years'  hard  labor  in 
Siberia,  with  subsequent  banishment  for  life  as 
a  colonist.  Such  was  the  cost  of  trying  to  be  a 
Cobden  or  a  Bright  in  Russia !  Yet  Cherni- 
shevsky did  not  lose  heart.      It  was  the  lot  of 


216  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

this  remarkable  man  to  exert  his  influence  over 
minds  in  Russia  under  conditions  which  would 
have  made  the  career  of  his  English  models 
well-nigh  impossible.  They  possessed  constitu- 
tional means  of  agitating  ;  Chernishevsky  had 
none.  Bright  and  Cobden  had  public  plat- 
forms from  which  to  speak  openly  to  the  peo- 
ple ;  Chernishevsky  could  not  talk  freely  in  the 
circle  of  his  own  intimate  friends  without  ap- 
prehension of  giving  offense  to  the  government 
through  the  ears,  of  the  ubiquitous  police  spy. 
Everything  7and  every  one  seemed  to  conspire 
against  Chernishevsky  becoming  a  power.  It 
was  he  who  had  to  give  painful  birth  to  his 
socialistic  doctrines  under  the  very  eye  of  the 
censor,  he  who  was  compelled  to  produce  his 
chef  d'ceuvre  not  in  a  gilded  saloon  of  the 
Nevsky  Prospect,  but  in  the  cheerless  seclusion 
of  a  St.  Petersburg  prison.  Yet  the  man 
wielded  an  influence  widespread  and  extraordi- 
nary. Scarcely  had  he  been  cast  into  prison  be- 
fore he  began  the  composition  of  a  work  which 
was  destined  to  add  enormously  to  the  number 
of  his  followers.  It  was  the  famous  romance 
"  What 's  to  be  done  ?  "  The  success  of  this 
book  —  tediously  prolix  and  inartistic  as  a  lit- 
erary composition  —  was  mainly  due  to  its  so- 
cialism, its  idealistic  views  of  life,  and  its  hints 
rather  than  schemes  for  the  reorganization  of 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS.         217 

labor  and  of  society.  Written  anonymously  for 
the  "Contemporary,"  artfully  constructed  to 
evade  condemnation  by  the  censor,  and  suggest- 
ing much  to  be  read  between  the  lines,  the 
novel  achieved  a  fair  reputation  in  the  periodi- 
cal press  before  its  real  tendencies  were  discov- 
ered. Prohibition  came  at  last,  and  insured,  as 
it  usually  does  in  Russia,  the  complete  success 
of  the  thing  prohibited.  Since  then,  public  taste 
has  gone  far  ahead  of  "What 's  to  be  dbne^?  " 
yet  the  censor  cannot  even  in  1885-  find  in  his 
heart  to  "permit"  the  volume,  even  as  a  lit- 
erary curiosity. 

At  last  Chernishevsky  was  taken  from  his 
cell  in  the  Fortress  of  Peter  and  Paul  at  St. 
Petersburg,  and  transferred  to  the  place  of  his 
exile  and  hard  labor.  For  nineteen  years  he  dis- 
appeared from  Europe  and  from  civilization. 
What  were  his  thoughts  during  that  long  pe- 
riod ?  How  he  suffered  and  in  what  way,  who 
can  tell  ?  From  1864  to  1871  he  was  kept  at  a 
station  in  the  Zabaikal  province,  Eastern  Sibe- 
ria; from  1871  to  1883  he  was  detained  at 
Viluisk,  a  town  on  the  river  Vilui,  not  far  from 
Yakutsk.  On  one  occasion  an  attempt  was 
made  to  rescue  him,  but  Chernishevsky  could 
not  be  roused  from  the  lethargic  despair  into 
which  he  had  fallen.  The  government  allowed 
nothing  to  transpire  concerning  their  prisoner ; 


218  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

in  the  end,  the  exile  became  a  mystery,  and  the 
source  of  all  kinds  of  rumors.  In  1880  literary 
Europe  heard  of  his  death;  in  1881  Herr  Ul- 
bach  asked  the  Vienna  Literary  Congress  to  pe- 
tition the  late  Tsar  for  the  man's  release  ;  just 
before  the  death  of  Alexander  II.  the  St.  Pe- 
tersburg journal  u  Strana  "  received  a  first  warn- 
ing for  having  called  upon  the  government  to 
allow  Chernishevsky's  return  to  Europe. 

In  the  autumn  of  1883,  to  the  surprise  of  all, 
Chernishevsky  was  transferred  from  Siberia  to 
Astrakhan  by  virtue  of  an  imperial  pardon, 
forming  one  of  the  "concessions  "  of  the  Coro- 
nation Manifesto.  Being  in  Astrakhan  by  a 
mere  coincidence  when  he  entered  Europe,  I 
was  the  finSt  European,  not  a  Russian  or  a  gov- 
ernment official,  to  see  him  on  his  return.  At 
first  he  seemed  to  me  broad-shouldered,  strong- 
limbed  and  active,  looking  at  fifty-five  fully  ten 
years  younger.  A  second  glance  showed  him 
to  be  nervously  restless  in  his  manner,  in  a 
state  bordering  on  mental  prostration,  a  com- 
plete myope.  He  received  me  warmly,  and 
we  conversed  together  for  more  than  an  hour. 
What  he  told  me  of  his  experiences  in  exile 
has  already  been  published ; 1  there  are  other 
and  special  reasons  why  I  do  not  repeat  it  here. 
The  story  may  have  been  reliable  enough,  so 

i  Daily  Neibs,  December  22, 1883. 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS.  219 

far  as  it  went,  yet  the  fact  that  it  was  told 
"in  the  toils" — at  Astrakhan  rather  than  at 
Paris  or  London  —  deprives  it  of  historic  value. 
Nineteen  years'  experience  of  Russian  exile 
poorly  qualifies  a  man  of  shattered  nerves  and 
impaired  physical  health  for  any  formidable  in- 
dictment of  a  government  upon  whose  "  clem- 
ency "  he  depends  not  only  for  the  smallest 
comforts  of  life,  but  for  the  right  to  exist  itself. 
And  when  such  a  man  has  courage  enough  to 
admit  that  he  was  once  put  into  chains,  — 
"  against  the  wishes  of  the  government,"  —  the 
reader  may  easily  fill  up  the  gaps  of  a  narra- 
tive like  that  told  to  me.  Such,  then,  was  our 
interview.  I  have  already  indicated  the  short- 
ness of  its  duration.  Disturbed  by  the  con- 
stant trepidations  of  the  ex-exile's  faithful  wife, 
watched  over  from  without  by  that  body  of 
spies  who  still  hold  Chernishevsky,  "pardoned" 
by  the  Russian  government,  the  prisoner  of  the 
Russian  police,  we  at  last  decided  to  separate. 
Before  taking  leave  of  me  Chernishevsky  placed 
in  my  hand  a  small  volume,  in  a  blank  page  of 
which  he  had  linked  out  names  with  the  words, 
"  In  memory  of  our  acquaintance,  Astrakhan, 
1883."  On  our  rising  to  say  good-by,  Madame 
Chernishevsky  entered  the  room,  and  with  a 
hasty  movement  of  solicitude  threw  her  arms 
around  her  husband,  as  if  to  shield  him  from 


220  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

some  impending  peril,  —  tears  the  meanwhile 
choking  her  utterance.  He  gently  unclasped 
her  hands,  stroked  her  forehead  caressingly, 
and  having  uttered  a  few  words  of  affectionate 
consolation,  kissed:  her.  "She  is  so  afraid!" 
said  Chernishevsky  in  explanation.  Then  I 
took  my  departure. 

Let  us  now  glance  at  the  organizers  and  con- 
spirators of  the  revolt;  in  its  dynamic  period. 
Of  these  nonq  was  more  remarkable  than  So- 
phie Lvovna  I^erovskaya,  who  belonged  to  one 
of  the  most  aristocratic  iamilies  in  Russia.  One 
of  her  ancestors  was  the  morganatic  husband  of 
the'  Empress  Elizabeth  Petrovna.  Her  grand- 
father was  Minister  of  Public  Instruction  ;  her 
father,  General  Governor  of  St.  Petersburg. 
Sophie  Lvovna  was  born  in  the  capital  in  the 
year  1854.  Strongly  attached  to  her  mother, 
who  loved  her  much  in  return,  she  had  a  pe- 
culiar aversion  for  her  father,  who  is  described 
as  a  chinovnik,  full  of  the  pettiness  and  self- 
seeking  of  his  class.  Her  education  began  at 
the  age  of  eight  and  continued  for  six  years. 
In  1869  the  family  returned  to  St.  Peters- 
burg from  the  Crimea.  She  at  once  entered 
the  women's  class  of  a  gymnasium,  and  there 
formed  the  acquaintance  of  Sophie  Loschern, 
Kornilova,  and  others,  all  of  whom  afterwards 
took  part  in  the  propaganda.     On  her  father 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS.         221 

forbidding  the  visits  of  these  acquaintances  » 
Sophie  Lvovna  left  home  never  to  ieturn. 
Eager  for  knowledge,  she  next  joined  the  Chai- 
kovtsy  Society,  —  at  first  a  literary,  afterwards 
a  political  organization,  —  and  began  an  earnest 
study  of  social  and  political  questions.  While 
qualifying  herself  as  a  school-teacher,  she  be- 
came acquainted  with  the  writings  of  Cherni- 
shevsky  and  Dobrolyubov ;  for  the  famous 
"  Shty  Dyelat  ?  "  (What 's  to  be  donej)  of  the 
former,  she  entertained^  ail  enthusiastic  admira- 
tion. Prepared  at  last  for  *<  going  to  the  peo- 
ple," she  set  out  on  her  pilgrimage,  traversing 
the  whole  course  of  the  Lower  Volga  in  pursu- 
ance of  her  mission.  Hardships  under  which 
a  peasant  woman  would  have  sunk,  she  bore 
with  the  greatest  resolution,  even  cheerfulness. 
Her  food  was  mostly  milk  and  roots  ;  her  bed 
rarely  anything  more  than  a  sack  filled  with 
straw.  In  1872  she  had  reached  Kama,  near 
the  Ural  range,  and  was  wandering  from  vil- 
lage to  village,  endeavoring  to  awaken  the  peo- 
ple to  a  knowledge  of  their  lot.  We  next  see 
her  in  Tver,  aiding  the  cause  of  the  revolt  as  a 
school-teacher.  Late  in  1873  she  returned  to 
St.  Petersburg.  Her  arrest  followed,  but  after 
a  year  spent  in  prison  she  was  set  at  liberty 
owing  to  want  of  evidence.  For  three  years 
she  remained  under  police  surveillance.     This 


222  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

space  of  time  she  utilized  in  acquiring  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  healing  art ;  her  diploma  was  ob- 
tained after  a  regular  course  at  a  medical  school 
in  Simpheropol.  In  1877  the  members  of  the 
ChaikoY-tsy- Society,  to  the  number  of  one  hun- 
dred and  ninety-three,  found  themselves  in  the 
hands  of  the  police,  charged  with  political  con- 
spiracy. After  a  long  trial  the  jury  set  So- 
phie Lvovna  at  liberty,  but  the  authorities  ban- 
ished her  "  administratively  "  to  the  northern 
government  of  Olonets.  On  the  way  thither 
she  escaped  from  her  guards,  concealed  herself 
for  six  hours  in  a  wood,  and  then  made  her 
way  back  to  St.  Petersburg.  Soon  afterwards 
she  took  part,  as  leader,  in  various  attempts  to 
rescue  conspirators  by  force  from  the  custody 
of  the  police.  At  Kharkov  she  headed  a  band 
disguised  as  gendarmes.  In  1879  she  actively 
assisted  in  preparing  the  famous  mine  at  Mos- 
cow. Later  she  helped  to  organize  the  "  Nar- 
odnaya  Volya  "  (People's  Will)  party.  Her  last 
act  as  a  conspirator  was  to  give  the  signal  for 
the  assassination  of  Alexander  II. 

Sophie  Lvovna's  personality  has  been  de- 
scribed at  great  length.  With  an  extraordinary 
capacity  for  conspiracy  and  organization,  she 
remained  a  woman,  yet  was  in  some  respects  a 
mere  child.  -  At  twenty-six  she  looked  not  more 
than  eighteen.     Her   features  were  strikingly 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS.         223 

open,  her  face  oval,  her  forehead  singularly 
high.  The  eyes  were  blue  and  the  complexion 
blonde.  To  many,  her  whole  aspect  was  that  of 
personified  youth.  She  laughed  heartily  when 
provoked  to  merriment,  dressed  simply,  an4 
like  most  Russian  women  held  uncleanliness 
in  horror.  Her  liking  for  children  was  great ; 
as  an  attendant  on  the  sick  she  was  unsur- 
passed. 

Her  relations  with  Varvara  Sergeiyevna,  her 
mother,  were  of  the  tenderest  kind.  To  see 
this  parent,  the  daughter  frequently  risked  her 
life.  She  was  particularly  sensitive  of  Var- 
vara's  anxiety  on  her  account,  and  did  all  in 
her  power  to  allay  it.  At  last,  under  final 
arrest  and  awaiting  a  sentence  that  was  to  send 
her  to  the  scaffold,  she  wrote  to  her  mother 
what  must  be  called  one  of  the  most  eloquent 
and  solemn  and  touching  epistles  ever  composed 
in  anticipation  of  death. 

My  darling,  my  priceless  mother  [it  began], 
the  thought  of  how  it  is  with  thee  pains  and  tor- 
ments me  continually.  My  dear  one,  I  implore  thee, 
calm  thyself,  spare  thyself,  and  do  not  be  troubled  in 
mind,  not  only  for  the  sake  of  those  who  surround 
thee,  but  also  for  my  sake.  Not  for  a  moment  do  I 
sorrow  concerning  my  fate ;  ^  look  forward  to  it 
calmly,  for  I  have  long  known  and  anticipated  that 
it  would  end  thus.     And  this  fate  is,  after  all,  dear 


224  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

mother,  not  so  terrible.     I  have  lived  as  my  convic- 
tions dictated;  contrary  to   them  I  could   not  act; 
therefore  I  await  with  a  calm  conscience  all  that  im- 
pends for  me.     One  thing  only  weighs  upon  me  like 
a  heavy  burden ;  and  it  is  thy  sorrow,  my  precious 
mother.     That  is  all  that  troubles  me  ;  if  I  could  only 
lighten  thy  pain  there  is  nothing  that  I  would  not  give. 
But  remember,  my  darling  1  mother,  that  thou  hast  a 
large  family  about   thee,  and  that  to  the  children 
who  surround  thee  thou  art  necessary  as  a  model  of 
moral  strength.     In  my  inmost  soul  I  have   always 
regretted  that  I  could  never  attain  to  that  moral  height 
whereon  thou   standest;  yet  in  certain  moments  of 
doubt,  thy  image  has  always  sustained  me.     I  shall 
not  assure  thee  of  my  affection,  for  thou  knowest  that 
from  my  earliest  childhood  thou  hast  been  the  object 
of  my  continual  and  most  sublime  love.     Concern 
regarding  thee  was  always  for  me  a  great  pain.     My 
darling,  I  hope  thou  wilt  calm  thyself,  and  to  some 
extent,  at  least,  forgive  me  for  all  the  sorrow  I  am 
bringing  thee.     I  hope  that  thou  wilt  not  blame  me 
too  severely.    Thy  reproach  is  the  only  thing  that  can 
oppress  me.     Passionately,  passionately,  in  imagina- 
tion, I  kiss  thy  dear  hands,  and  on  my  knees  I  im- 
plore thee  not  to  be  angry  with  me.     Give  my  warm 
greeting  to  all  my  relatives.     I  have  only  one  more 
request  to  make,  dearest  mother  ;  buy  me  a  collar 
and  gloves  with  buttons  ;  .  .  .  one  must  prepare  one's 
costume  for  the  tribunal.     Till  we  meet  again,  my 

1  The  expression  used  in  the  original  is  "  golubonka  "  —  a  word 
hardly   translatable,  literally  "  dear  little  dove." 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS.         225 

darling,  I  repeat  my  prayer.  Do  not  be  angry  and 
do  not  trouble  thyself  about  me.  My  fate  is~  not  so 
sad,  after  all,  and  it  beseems  not  that  thou  shouldst 
mourn  for  me.     Thy  Sonya.  1 

March  22  (April  3),  1881. 

On  receiving  this  letter,  the  mother  hastened 
to  the  prison  in  which  her  daughter  was  con- 
fined. Permission  to  see  her  was  refused  from 
day  to  day  down>tp  the  very  hour  of  execution. 
At  last  the  mother  had  the- terrible  consolation 
of  seeing  her  child  driven  away  to  the  place  of 
slaughter  on  an  open  tumbril,  in  the  midst  of 
those  companions  from  whom  she  had  implored' 
the  judges  not  to  separate  her. 

Andrei  Zheliabov,  one  of  the  five  who  "per- 
ished in  the  Semenovsky  Field,  was  born  a 
serf  in  the  Krim  in  1850.  His  grandfather, 
a  sectarian,  taught  him  Ecclesiastical  Slavonic, 
and  made  him  learn  the  psalter  by  heart.  Soon 
Andrei  attracted  the  attention  of  his  owner, 
who  gave  him  lessons  in  Russian  and  finally 
sent  him  to  school  at  Kerch.  He  entered  Odessa 
University  as  a  student  in  1868,  but  was  ex- 
pelled for  having  joined  in  a  demonstration 
against  a  professor.  Zheliabov  thenceforward 
had  to  support  himself  by  giving  lessons.  At 
first  he  spent  his  leisure  in  organizing  students' 
associations,  libraries,  etc. ;  tiring  of  this  sphere 

1  Diminutive  of  "Sophie." 
15 


226  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

of  activity,  he  joined  a  political  society  formed 
in  Odessa  about  the  time  of  the  Nechayev  con- 
spiracy. In  this  connection  he  became  very 
popular  amongst  his>comrades.  In  1872  he  be- 
came member  of  an  organization  affiliated  with 
the  Cfyaikovtsy  Society,  and  later  in  that  ca- 
pacity .took  part  in  the  movement  "to  the  peo- 
ple." One  of  his  disguises  as(  a  propagandist 
was  that  of  a  vegetable-seller.  But  his  ambi- 
tion rose  above  the  work  of  explaining  socialism 
to  peasants,  or  distributing  revolutionary  litera- 
ture in  workshops  and  factories.  Zheliabov  was 
a  born  organizer  and  leader  ;  a  man  of  deed 
rather  than  word,  yet  eloquent  and  persuasive 
in  an  emergency ;  easily  angered  by  insult  or 
ridicule,  he  had  a  pleasin'g  manner,  and  was  a 
favorite  in  society.  Zheliabov  approved  of  all 
the  measures  likely  to  further  the  cause  jof  the 
revolt.  Tsarism,  the  unlimited  power  of  a  sin- 
gle individual  wielded  over  a  whole  people,  — 
this  he  hated  and  opposed  with  all  the  intensity- 
of  feeling  of  which  his  passionate  nature  was 
capable.  The  news  of  Karakasov's  shot  he  re- 
ceived, when  only  a  boy  of  fifteen,  with  an  ex- 
clamation of  delight.  In  1877,  involved  in  the 
Chaikovtsy  prosecution,  he  spent  seven  months 
in  prison  as  the  penalty  of  his  activity  as  a  prop- 
agandist. In  1879  he  entered  the  ranks  of  the 
terrorists,  and  was  one  of  those  who  sentenced 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS.         227 

the  Tsar  to  death  at  Voronezh.  Immediately 
after  the/congress,  he  proceeded  to  the  south  of 
Russia  and  was  there  active  in  winning  recruits, 
particularly  in  the  university  towns.  As  a 
speaker,  his  success  was  marked.  His  mastery 
of  the  subject  in  hand,  the  logical  complete- 
ness of  his  arguments,  his  clear  enunciation  and 
professorial  air,  as  well  as  his  readiness  at  re- 
partee, charmed  many  and  convinced  more. 
Late  in  1879,  Zheliabov,  as  #gent  of  the  Execu- 
tive Committee,  superintended  the  construction 
of  the  mine  at  Alexandrovsk,  and  after  the 
triple  failure,  went  to  St.  Petersburg,  where  he 
was  appointed  to  the  oversight  of  a  number  of 
dynamite  Victories.  In  the  capital  he  gathered 
about  him  a  number  of  young  people  who  will- 
ingly accepted  him  as  their  guide  and  leader. 
His  description  of  himself  was  that  of  a  born 
demagogue,  his  proper  place  being,  as  he  was 
accustomed  to  assure  his  friends,  in  the  street, 
in  the  middle  of  a  crowd  of  workmen.  Zhelia- 
bov had  great  fondness  for  literature.  It  is  re- 
lated of  him  that  "  Tarass  Bulba,"  Gogol's  cele- 
brated story,  so  fascinated  him  that  he  could  not 
close  the  book  until  he  had  lost  a  night  of  sleep  in 
reading  it  through.  "  Others  will  rise  up  after 
us  "  was  his  unvarying  reply  to  prognostications 
of  personal  disaster.  In  Zheliabov's  faith  the 
cause  would  live,  though  the  individuals  might 


228  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

perish.  The  prosecuting  attorney  said  of  him, 
during  the  trial  which  ended  in  the  quintuple 
sentence  of  death :  "  Zheliabov  was  a  remark- 
ably typical  conspirator  in  everything,  —  in 
gestures,  in  mimicry,  in  movement,  in  idea, 
and  in  language,  —  and  did  all  with  a  certain 
theatrical  effect.  To  the  last  moment  he  re- 
mained robed  in  his  conspiratorial  toga. '  It  is 
impossible  to  deny  to  him  the  possession  of 
talent  and  cleverness." 

Nikolai  Kibalshchich,  born  in  1854,  was  the 
son  of  a  priest  stationed  in  a  village  of  the 
Chernigov  government.  In  1871  he  studied  at 
the  School  for  Engineers,  two  years  later  join- 
ing the  Medical  Academy  in  St.  Petersburg. 
His  first  collision  with  the  authorities  occurred 
in  1875.  He  had  casually  undertaken  to  take 
charge  of  a  packet  of  revolutionary  publications 
for  a  friend  living  in  constant  dread  of  a  domi- 
ciliary visitation,  and  on  the  police  selecting  the 
house  of  Kibalshchich  for  their  attentions,  they 
found  the  incriminating  literature  in  his  posses- 
sion. He  was  kept  in  prison  for  three  years, 
the  whole  of  which  time  he  devoted  to  study ; 
his  very  "  exercise "  promenades  are  said  to 
have  been  utilized  in  the  task  of  winning  his 
fellow-prisoners  over  to  the  cause  of  the  revolt. 
He  was  a  man  of  strongly  phlegmatic  tempera- 
ment;  his   manner   was   reserved,   his   speech 


PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS.         229 

slow,  and  his  moods  so  equable  that  it  was  im- 
possible to  say  when  he  was  pleased  or  when  in 
anger.  Only  once  was  he  warmed  into  visible 
enthusiasm.  It  was  when  his  comrades  told 
him  of  a  plot  against  the  imperial  family.  Set 
at  liberty,  Kibalshchich  at  once  began  the  study 
of  explosives,  and  knowing  French,  German, 
and  English,  quickly  mastered  all  that  was  to 
be  learned  about  mines,  bombs,  and  the  like. 
He  had  a  whole  laboratory  fitted  up  for  his  ex- 
periments ;  became  the  chemist,  the  technolo- 
gist of  terrorism,  and  finally  prepared  those  in- 
struments of  death  which  were  thrown  on  the 
13th  of  March. 

Grinevsky,  who  killed  the  Tsar  and  was  hoist 
by  nis  own  petard,  was  a-EaLe*.  born  in  the  gov- 
ernment of  Minsk  in  the  year  1856.  His  fam- 
ily lived  in  the  greatest  poverty.  The  boy  was 
a  diligent  scholar.  In  contact  with  comrade 
students  at  Bialystock,  Grinevsky  imbibed  so- 
cialistic views,  and  had  devoted  himself  to  the 
service  of  the  people  long  before  his  educational 
course  was  at  an  end.  In  1875  he  went  to  St. 
Petersburg,  and  there  joined  the  pupils  of  the 
Technological  Institute.  His  activity  in  the 
capital  was  marked.  He  established  a  secret 
society,  collected  money  for  exiles,  fabricated 
passports,  and  at  last  went  to  the  people  with 
the  rest.  On  his  return,  disappointed  and  dis- 
couraged, he  joined  the  terrorists. 


230  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

Such  were  four  of  the  personalities  who  aided 
in  carrying  the  revolt  into  its  dynamic  phase. 
They  represented  strata  of  society  utterly  re- 
moved from  each  other  in  many  ways  ;  for  one 
was  born  an  aristocrat,  the  second  came  into 
the  world  a  slave,  the  third  was  the  son  of  a 
priest,  and  the  fourth  a  student  in  the  schools. 
Yet  they  were  all  united  in  an  intense  love  of 
their  country,  in  a  sorrow  for  its  suffering  peo- 
ple, and  a  hatred  of  tyranny  and  oppression 
that  made  actions  immoral  in  themselves  seem 
to  them  the  highest  virtue ;  and  all  of  them 
alike  met  death,  not  with  the  selfish  circum- 
spection of  the  conspirator  who  makes  success 
conditional  on  his  own  safety,  but  with  the  sub- 
lime recklessness  of  men  and  women  who,  how- 
ever misguided  in  their  choice  of  methods,  yet 
gladly  offer  their  lives  for  the  cause  which  they 
believe  to  be  sacred  and  true. 


MODERN  IRRITATIONS. 


Such  has  been  the  history  of  the  revolt.  It 
began  in  an  unscrupulous  negation  of  the  racial 
spirit  and  traditions;  in  the  gradual  destruc- 
tion of  individual  and  communal  liberties  ;  in 
the  forcible  unification  of  tribes  and  territories 
that  stood  naturally  apart ;  in  the  wresting  from 
the  people,  by  force  of  ambition  and  arms,  those 
privileges  of  self-government  which  they  have 
never  yielded  up,  and  which  they  claim  to  this 
day;  in  the  establishment  of  an  absolutism  re- 
pugnant to  the  national  temper  and  genius,  in- 
consistent with  its  early  history,  irreconcilable 
with  its  modern  civilization.  To  these  original 
causes  must  also  be  added  a  long  series  of  irri- 
tations extending  from  the  earliest  days  of  Tsar- 
ism  down  to  the  present  time.  Intensified  by 
domestic  tyranny,  stimulated  not  less  power- 
fully by  agrarian  enslavement,  the  revolt  be- 
came more  bitter  with  every  increase  in  the 
burdens  which  the  growing  state  cast  upon  the 
individual.  At  first  passive,  or  only  indirectly 
dynamic,  it  soon  assumed,  under  the  stimulus  of 


232  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

Western  culture,  the  character  of  propaganda 
and  declared  resistance  to  authority  ;  finally  we 
see  it  developed,  under  cruel  methods  of  reprisal 
and  repression,  into  a  system  of  organized  vio- 
lence and  terrorism. 

The  revolt  has  its  foundation  of  historic  dis- 
content, and  yet  draws  much  of  its  modern  in- 
tensity from  irritations  and  conditions  that  have 
been  created  by  absolutism  itself.  No  one  can 
live  long  in  Russia  without  finding  himself  sur- 
rounded by  an  atmosphere  strangely  wanting  in 
restrictive  social  influences.  In  the  west  of 
Europe  the  individual  is  subordinated,  in  spite 
of  himself,  to  the  conceptions  and  canons  and 
systems  of  society  at  large.  In  Russia,  an  ex- 
traordinary scope  for  doing  unusual  things  in 
politics,  religion,  and  morals  takes  the  place  of 
subservience  to  cumulative  prejudices  and  tradi^ 
tions.  The  striking  characteristic  of  Russian 
society  is  that  it  is  held  together  by  no  bond  of 
union  at  all  valid  for  the  regulation  of  personal 
conduct.  It  seems  as  though  historical  as  well  as 
geographical  conditions  had  developed  the  indi- 
vidual, at  the  expense  of  the  social,  sentiment. 
And  this  want  of  social  solidarity,  setting  in- 
dividualism free  to  act  out  its  own  desires  and 
caprices,  often  blinding  it  to  the  general  inter- 
ests of  the  social  mass,  has  been  intensified  by 
the  very  power  which  ought  to  have  striven  for 


MODERN  IRRITATIONS.  233 

its  removal.  Fearing  all  union  of  thought,  all 
intercommunication  of  idea,  all  free  groupings 
and  assimilations  of  the  intellectual  elements  of 
the  national  life,  the  Russian  government  has 
brought  its  repressive  measures  to  bear  upon  the 
very  machinery  by  which,  in  other  countries, 
society  hedges  its  individual  elements  around 
with  a  healthy  moral  control.  There  is  nothing 
more  needed  in  Russia  than  a  public  conscience  ; 
this  the  government  has  destroyed,  or  rather 
rendered  impossible. 

Various  instruments  have  been  employed  to 
cripple  the  social  sentiment  in  Russia.  Not  the 
least  powerful  of  them  is  that  of  the  censorship. 
Just  as  in  every  theatre  in  Russia  there  is  a  loge 
reserved  for  the  chief  of  police,  so  in  every  Rus- 
sian newspaper  office  there  is  a  silent  presence, 
ever  holding  in  check  the  pen,  if  not  the 
thought,  of  the  unhappy  journalist  whose  duty 
it  is  to  write  on  u  the  topics  of  the  day."  Be- 
tween the  years  1865  and  1880  the  Press  Coun- 
cil had  given  one  hundred  and  sixty-seven 
warnings  and  suspended  fifty-two  newspapers. 
In  the  year  1882  five  journals  were  suspended  ; 
five  others  received  a  first  warning,  three  a 
second,  and  one  a  third ;  from  six  the  privilege 
of  street  sale  was  withdrawn.  Journals  indis- 
pensable to  healthy  social  development,  like  the 
"Den,"   the    "Moskva,"    the    "  Grazhdanin," 


234  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

"  Trad,"  "  Poriadok,"  and  the  "  Golos,"  have 
one  by  one  succumbed  to  censorial  severity  un- 
til to-day  the  Russians  have  scarcely  an  inde- 
pendent, certainly  no  outspoken  liberal,  organ 
left.  The  case  of  the  "  Otechestvenny  Zapiski  " 
(Annals  of  the  Fatherland),  suppressed  last 
year,  affords  a  striking  illustration  of  the  condi- 
tion of  journalism  in  Russia.  The  editor  of 
that  review,  the  celebrated  Prince  Saltykov, 
better  known  by  his  nom  de  guerre  of  "  Shche- 
drin,"  had  brought  into  existence  a  new  kind  of 
journalism  suited  to  the  exigencies  of  censor- 
ship on  the  one  hand,  and  to  the  character  of 
his  own  satirical  talent  on  the  other.  He  wrote 
mainly  tales.  They  were  like  clippings  from 
Boccaccio,  just  as  light,  just  as  witty,  just  as 
immoral.  It  was  like  a  Russian  Heine  imitat- 
ing the  "Decameron"  in  Slavonic.  The  aim  of 
the  writer  was  to  show  that  so  long  as  political 
topics  were  avoided  almost  any  excesses  might 
be  indulged  in.  And  the  experiment  was  thor- 
oughly successful,  for  Shchedrin  succeeded  in 
putting  before  his  public  sketches  revolting  in 
their  lewdness;  such  as,  in  any  other  Country 
than  Russia,  would  have  brought  upon  their 
author  the  punishment  of  the  criminal  law. 1 

1  The  Annals  was  suppressed,  the  reader  may  remember,  not 
for  its  indecency,  to  which  the  censor  paid  no  (official)  attention, 
but  for  its  "  dangerous  "  political  opinions,  and  the  alleged  connec- 
tion of  members  of  its  staff  with  secret  societies. 


MODERN  IRRITATIONS.  235 

The  evil  of  censorship  is  multifold.  It  not 
only  prevents  the  formation  of  healthy  public 
sentiment ;  it  discourages  thinking ;  by  trammel- 
ing expression,  it  makes  journalism  frivolous ; 
it  forms  a  serious  hindrance  to  educational 
processes,  and  by  menacing  them  with  heavy 
losses  makes  newspaper  enterprises  the  most 
precarious  of  all.  Peculiarly  vexatious,  more- 
over, are  the  restrictions  upon  the  reading  of 
foreign  books,  since  they  not  only  deprive  the 
studious  classes  of  valuable  and  urgently  needed 
knowledge,  but  make  an  invidious  distinction 
in  favor  of  chin,  or  rank.  A  general,  or  his 
hierarchical  equivalent,  may  read  a  -book  like 
Zola's  "Nana"  with  impunity,  yet  the  poor 
student  consults  his  borrowed  scientific  treat- 
ise or  religious  essay  in  fear  and  trembling. 
Young  men  often  spend  the  whole  of  their 
leisure  time,  for  months  together,  in  copying 
volumes  which  they  can  only  handle  at  the  risk 
of  being  dealt  with  as  readers  of  "forbidden 
literature."  While  in  St.  Petersburg  I  saw  a 
copy  of  the  French  work  "Jesus-Buddha"  pro- 
duced under  strangely  mediaeval  conditions. 
The  owner  of  the  original  was  an  army  general, 
who  had  the  full  right  of  his  rank  to  peruse  the 
book,  but  had  pronounced  it  "dry  reading" 
and  handed  it  over  to  a  friend  uncut ;  the  copy 
belonged  to  a  young  medical  student,  who  was 


236  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

precluded  by  his  want  of  the  needed  chin  from 
even  buying  the  work,  but  had  taken  so  serious 
an  interest  in  the  volume  as  to  consider  five 
months  well  spent  in  its  transcription  ! 

Another  condition  highly  favorable  to  the  re- 
volt is  the  absence  from  Russian  life  of  all  those 
specialized  activities  which  citizenship  involves 
in  countries  governed  constitutionally.  For 
the  purely  social  effects  of  this  kind  of  empti- 
ness one  need  only  glance  at  the  literary  pic- 
tures which  Gogol  has  left  his  countrymen,  —  at 
the  petty  aspirations  and  miserable  interests  of 
characters  like  Ivan  Ivanovich  and  Ivan  Nike- 
phorOvich,  with  their  lifelong  feud  over  an  old 
gun  ;  like  the  chinovnik  Akaky  Akakyevich,  the 
single  ambition  of  whose  existence  was  to  have 
a  new  coat ;  or  Perigov,  the  officer,  whose  field 
of  glory  was  the  Nevsky  Prospect,  whenever  he 
could  pace  it  at  the  fashionable  hour  in  full  mili- 
tary uniform,  with  a  sword  scabbard  dangling 
at  his  heels.  The  results  of  political  emptiness 
are  seen  in  the  revolt  itself.  The  need  of  play- 
ing a  part  in  politics,  of  aspiring  to  office  or 
power,  however  petty  that  power  may  be,  of 
organizing  something,  conducting  something, 
championing  something,  —  this  is  so  strong  in 
modern  civilization  that  if  it  be  suppressed  for 
one  side  or  phase  of  life,  it  is  sure  to  find  satis^ 
faction  and  fulfillment  on  another.  ,  The  energy, 


MODERN  IRRITATIONS.  237 

the  talent  for  organization,  the  natural  leader- 
ship and  acquired  discipline  about  which  one 
hears  so  much  in  nihilistic  literature,  are  sim- 
ply so  many  qualities~Tihat  have  been  diverted 
from  their  proper  spheres  of  immediate  public 
usefulness  into  activities  of  conspiracy  and  prop- 
aganda and  terrorism.  Even  the  intellectual  ex- 
ercise of  popular  assemblies  gathered  to  discuss 
public  affairs  is  denied  to  the  Russian  people. 
Hence,  while  there  is  no  career  for  the  political 
orator,  the  success  of  the  clandestine  demagogue 
is  assured  ;  while  political  parties  are  prohibited 
and  unknown,  secret  societies  everywhere  draw 
vitality  from  the  open  aid  or  tacit  sympathy 
of  the  people ;  wnile  the  existing  system  calls 
no  national  representatives  together  for  con- 
stitutional purposes,  delegates  converge  from 
all  the  provinces  to  sanction  the  dread  propo- 
sals of  the  Executive  Committee. 

Revolt  seems  natural,  sedition  innate  in  the 
Russian  capital.  Its  luminous  summer  mid- 
nights tend  to  mental  irritation ;  its  long  win- 
ter evenings  favor  conspiracy.  Its  populations 
seem  continually  hiding  from  each  other  in  the 
hearts  of  immense  tetragons  of  brick  and  stone, 
vast  as  the  quadrangles  which  they  inclose. 
Thousands  of  aspiring  young  men  and  women 
journey  annually  to  St.  Petersburg,  and  there 
lead  a  life  free  from  the  slightest  parental  re- 


238  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

straint.  An  unhealthy  atmosphere,  a  variety  of 
maladies,  the  daily  spectacle  of  the  most  abject 
and  terrible  forms  of  poverty  side  by  side  with 
that  of  the  most  ostentatious  and  self-compla- 
cent wealth,  are  of  themselves  sufficient,  with- 
out natural  predilection  or  political  grievance, 
to  prompt  to  pessimistic  views  of  life.  The 
students  are  sometimes  all  but  paupers  them- 
selves, and  not  a  few  owe  their  education  and 
their  prospects  wholly  to  the  bounty  of  the 
government.  When  pinched  in  resources,  they 
must  be  content  to  occupy  the  smallest  of  rooms 
in  the  biggest  of  buildings  ;  sometimes  not  more 
than  the  corner  of  an  apartment  falls  to  their 
lot  during  the  hours  of  sleep.  Students  have 
been  known  to  prepare  their  lessons  by  the  light 
of  the  staircase  or  street  lamp  in  order  to  save 
the  cost  of  a  candle,  or  to  walk  several  miles  in 
order  to  give  a  lesson  for  a  midday  meal.  And 
when  sorry  resources  like  these  fail,  one  sees  in 
the  newspapers  such  appeals  as  "Wanted,  some- 
thing to  do,  anywhere  and  for  anything ; " 
"  Here  's  half  a  year  gone,  and  I  've  got  nothing 
yet ; "  or  "  For  the  love  of  God  keep  a  blind 
student  and  his  family  from  starvation !  "  1 

The  Greek  Church  merely  extends  without 
strengthening  the  surface  exposed  by  absolutism 
to  the  assaults  of  the  revolt.     The  close  union 

1  Literally  translated  from  the  Golos. 


MODERN  IRRITATIONS.  239 

of  Tsarism  and  Orthodoxy,  strengthened  in 
some  recent  cases  to  the  point  of  conferring 
functions  of  police  espionage  upon  the  clergy, 
fails  to  disguise  the  relaxing  hold  of  the  church 
upon  the  masses  of  the  people.  Ignorance, 
drunkenness,  and  greed  of  wealth  continue  to  be 
the  vices  of  the  priesthood,  as  intellectual  stag- 
nation, unbroken  by  a  single  fundamental  re- 
form, continues  to  be  the  fatal  weakness  of  the 
national  religion.  "All  the  information  and 
evidence  obtainable,"  runs  the  report  of  an  im- 
perial commission  appointed  to  consider  the 
state  of  the  people  in  1873,  "  shows  that  the 
influence  of  the  clergy  is  in  a  continual  state 
of  decadence.  The  priesthood  is  little  imbued 
with  the  sacredness  of  its  mission  ;  it  presents 
not  the  slightest  example  of  morality.  ...  In 
Simbersk,  Pensa,  Samara,  and  Ufa,  there  is 
a  falling  off  in  the  performance  of  religious 
duties  amongst  the  peasantry :  the  causes  are 
the  small  moral  influence  of  the  clergy,  the 
absence  of  all  civil  and  religious  instruction, 
and  the  influence  of  the  dram-shop."  For  the 
church  to  become  the  genuine  church  of  the 
people,  it  must  be  divorced  from  Tsarism  and 
reformed.  The  change  wrought  by  the  rasJcol 
in  the  days  of  Nikon  left  untouched  its  consti- 
tutions, rites,  and  language,  which  are  conse- 
quently the  same  now  as  they  were  a  thousand 


240  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

years  ago.  To  adapt  the  church  of  Vladimir 
to  the  popular  needs  of  modern  Russia  would 
require  an  ecclesiastical  re-birth.  To  maintain 
it  in  its  present  condition  ;  to  keep  the  monks 
in  their  idle  and  luxurious  uselessness,  the  white 
clergy  in  the  contempt  of  the  people,  and  the 
whole  functions  of  religious  ministration  in  an 
atmosphere  of  meaningless  formality  and  petty 
commercialism,  —  this  is  simply  to  aid  the  cause 
of  the  revolt. 

The  problem  of  reconciling  absolutism  with 
European  civilization  is  still  further  compli- 
cated by  the  increasing  discontent  of  the  agri- 
cultural classes.  The  sentimental  satisfaction 
which  was  conveyed  to  outsiders  by  the  uhaz 
of  1861  did  not  save  peasants  from  the  practi- 
cal results  of  the  legislation  which  made  them 
free  cultivators.  It  not  only  lessened  their 
share  of  land,  but  in  many  cases  raised  the 
government  charges  upon  it  to  a  rate  out  of  all 
proportion  to  the  annual  yield.  Instead  of  giv- 
ing the  agriculturist  his  freedom,  it  brought  him 
under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  new  commune. 
In  a  fiscal  sense  the  peasant  was  just  as  firmly 
attached  to  the  glebe  as  he  had  ever  been  since 
the  days  of  Boris  Godunov.  Where  the  land 
is  poor,  and  agrarian  operations  require  favor- 
able conditions  for  their  success,  the  tillers  of 
the  soil  live  a  life  of  abject  poverty  and,  over- 


MODERN  IRRITATIONS.  241 

burdened  with  commercial  and  state  charges, 
fall  an  easy  prey  to  avaricious  money-lenders. 
The  land-owning  nobles  have  also  s'uffered  seri- 
ously from  the  new  conditions  imposed  upon 
agriculture  by  the  Act  of  1861.  In  the  prov- 
ince of  Moscow  alone,  emancipation  has  thrown 
four  fifths  of  the  land  out  of  cultivation  in  fif- 
teen years. 

The  much  lauded  judicial  reform  is  almost  a 
dead  letter.  It  has  been  paralyzed  by  modifi- 
cations. In  thirty -nine  provinces  out  of  the 
seventy-two  the  old  courts  are  still  maintained. 
"  The  examining  magistrates,"  writes  Prince 
Krapotkin,1  "never  enjoyed  the  independence 
bestowed  on  them  by  the  new  law;  the  judges 
have  been  made  more  and  more  dependent 
upon  the  Minister  of  Justice,  whose  nominees 
they  are,  and  who  has  the  right  of  transferring 
them  from  one  province  to  another ;  the  in- 
stitution of  sworn  advocates,  uncontrolled  by 
criticism,  has  degenerated  absolutely ;  and  the 
peasant  whose  case  is  not  likely  to  become  a 
cause  eSlebre  does  not  receive  the  benefit  of 
counsel,  and  is  completely  in  the  hands  of  a 
creature  like  the  proeureur-imperial  in  Zola's 
novel." 

Most  serious  of  all,  perhaps,  are  the  irrita- 
tions of  the  police  system,  not  only  on  account 

1  Nineteenth  Century,  January,  1883. 
16 


242  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

of  their  sensational  elements,  but  because  they 
appeal  to  the  sympathies  and  impulses.  Noth- 
ing is  so  well  calculated  to  intensify  the  dy- 
namic character  of  the  revolt  as  the  punitive 
measures  devised  by  the  authorities  for  its  sup- 
pression. The  practice  of  administrative  exile, 
whereby  thousands  of  people  were  banished  to 
Siberia  without  trial,  —  without  even  the  for- 
mality of  communicating  the  cause  of  disap- 
pearance to  their  relatives,  —  was  continued 
up  to  the  year  1881,  and  only  then  mitigated 
to  the  extent  of  handing  such,  cases  over  to  a 
special  commission  for  its  approbation,  and  of 
limiting  the  banishment  to  a  term  of  five  years. 
The  process  still  goes  on,  and  retains  all  the 
secret  character  which  before  made  it  obnox- 
ious ;  the  check  imposed  simply  prevents  ban- 
ishment for  private,  that  is,  for  other  than  po- 
litical causes.  Hence  the  old  questions  arise 
in  every  exigency  of  public  excitement.  Who 
are  taken,  and  whither  ?  What  is  the  offense, 
and  who  are  the  judges  ?  Who  prosecute  ? 
What  is  the  punishment  ?  The  number  dealt 
with  in  this  fashion  is  enormous.  Under  Loris 
Melikov  it  reached  1696,  under  Ignatiev  it  was 
2836 !  Nor  do  these  figures  take  account  of 
the  other  method  of  dealing  administratively 
with,  prisoners,  by  which  the  authorities  are 
empowered  to  take  an  accused  who  has  been 


MODERN  IRRITATIONS.  243 

acquitted  by  a  jury  and  punish  him  secretly  as 
they  see  fit.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  Society 
should  be  restive  under  this  suspended  sword 
of  police  machinery  that,  often  without  more 
pretext  than  the  discovery  of  an  "  illegal "  pub- 
lication in  a  letter-box,  or  weightier  testimony 
than  that  of  a  paid  or  otherwise  interested  de- 
nunciator, may  now  cut  off  a  man  or  woman 
from  family,  home,  and  country  for  life  ?  It 
asks  for  new  processes  resting  upon  righteous 
laws  of  evidence,  for  other  forms  of  judicial 
procedure  more  European.  Above  all,  it  claims 
for  every  political  prisoner  or  person  now  dealt 
with  "  administratively  "  the  right  to  a  public 
trial. 

But  what  will  the  reader  think  of  Russian 
methods  of  treating  political  prisoners  after  they 
have  been  lodged  in  gaol  or  sent  into  exile  ? 
Not  very  long  ago  M.  Paul  Birvansky,  an  im- 
perial state  attorney,  was  sent  upon  a  special 
mission  to  Orenburg  by  the  Minister  of  Justice, 
with  orders  to  investigate  and  report  upon  the 
practice  of  the  imperial  tribunals  in  that  prov- 
ince. He  remained  absent  on  his  mission  four 
months,  and  his  experiences  were  published  in 
the  "  Syeverny  Vyestnik,"  (Northern  Messen- 
ger) :  — 

During  my  four  months'  inquiry  [he  wrote],  it 
was  revealed  to  me  how  our  judges  trample  the  laws 


244  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

under  foot ;  how  cynical  and  wanton  is  the  behavior 
of  our  police ;  how  savagely  brute  force  is  brought  to 
bear  upon  the  weak  and  friendless.  I  lived  in  an  at- 
mosphere of  appalling  groans  and  heart-breaking 
sighs.  I  liberated  innocent  persons  who  had  been 
kept  in  prison  by  the  executive  several  years  after 
they  had  been  publicly  acquitted  in  open  court,  and 
who  had  been  secretly  tortured.  I  took  down  the 
depositions  of  peasant  women  who  had  been  subjected 
to  torment  —  their  flesh  pinched  with  red-hot  tongs 
—  by  order  and  in  the  presence  of  the  chief  commis- 
sary of  police,  merely  because  they  had  presumed  to 
plead  on  behalf  of  their  unfortunate  husbands.  I 
convinced  myself  that  there  was  absolutely  nothing 
in  common  between  myself  and  the  local  authorities. 
A  black  and  bottomless  gulf  lay  between  us.  They 
trafficked  wantonly  with  our  laws,  converting  them 
into  instruments  of  extortion.  .  .  .  Words  fail  me  to 
'describe  the  impressions  made  upon  me  by  my  first 
visit  to  the  state  prisons.  Hundreds  of  human  beings 
find  a  premature  grave  in  these  loathsome  dens.  They 
die  lingering  deaths  therein,  or  emerge  from  them 
crippled  for  life.  ...  It  was  horrible  to  be  compelled 
to  acknowledge  to  one's  self  that  these  semi-animate, 
wasted,  filthy,  and  dun-colored  objects,  draped  in  a 
few  rotten  rags,  were,  after  all,  men  and  women.  .  .  . 
The  confined  atmosphere,  poisoned  by  exhalations 
from  every  sort  of  abomination,  absolutely  stopped 
my  breath,  so  rank  and  fetid  was  it.  ...  I  pass  over 
an  infinite  number  of  cases,  each  of  which  is  horrible 
enough  to  make  your  readers'  hair  stand  on  end,  and 


MODERN  IRRITATIONS.  245 

come  to  the  last  of  all.  I  was  making  my  customary 
round  of  the  district  prisons  when  I  noticed  an  abnor- 
mal excitement  among  the  prisoners  at  Ilezk.  The 
gaol  governor  was  also  agitated  and  pale.  I  insti- 
tuted an  inquiry  and  found  that  two  months  pre- 
viously all  the  prisoners  had  been  led  out  to  an  open 
space  outside  the  town  gates,  and  there  beaten  with 
such  inhuman  cruelty  that  the  populace  wept  bitterly 
at  the  spectacle.  .  .  .  First  they  were  flogged  until 
they  lost  consciousness  ;  then  water  was  poured  over 
them  till  they  recovered ;  then  the  warders  beat  them 
with  whatever  was  readiest  at  hand,  —  belt  buckles, 
prison  keys,  iron  chains,  and  the  butt-ends  of  rifles. 
The  ground  was  stained  with  blood  like  the  floor  of 
a  shambles.  Finally,  the  prisoners  were  tied  together 
with  ropes  by  the  feet  and  driven  into  the  great  court- 
yard of  the  gaol,  where  they  fell  down  from  sheer 
exhaustion  into  several  bleeding  and  disfigured  heaps, 
scarcely  recognizable  as  human  beings." 

Such  is  the  statement  not  of  a  terrorist,  or  of 
a  prisoner,  but  of  a  Russian  state_pjQQiiial.  It  is 
superfluous  of  course  to  add  that  M.  Birvansky 
was  speedily  dismissed  from  his  functions  at 
Orenburg,  and  that  for  publishing  Lis  expe-  y 
riences  the  "  Northern  Messenger "  was  sus- 
pended. 

The  allegation  that  torture  is  still  a  part  of 
the  Russian  punitive  system  is  supported  by 
statements  scarcely  less  confident  than  that  of 
M.  Birvansky.     Prince  Krapotkin  declares  that 


246  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

at  least  two  of  the  four  who  suffered  death  with 
.  ,Perovskaya  were  tortured  prior  to  their  execu- 
Jption  by  electricity ■,  in  order  to  compel  disclo- 
sures. 1  It  appears  much  more  certain  thatf  Is- 
sayey  was  kept  in  a  continual  state  of  nervous 
excitement,  with  the  alleged  aim  of  provoking 
a  confession.  Plotnikov,  who  had  been  in  prison 
for  years,  in  last  extremes  of  weakness  and  ill- 
health,  was  thrown  into  chains  for  having  one 
day  ventured  to  declaim  a  verse  of  his  favorite 
poet  in  the  hearing  of  the  gaoler.  Serekov,  for 
neglecting  to  salute  a  guard  placed  over  him, 
was  put  into  a  dark  cage,  so  small  that  he  could 
neither  stand  nor  sit  within,  and  had  to  main- 
tain an  attitude  highly  painful  and  exhausting. 
When  ^Alexandrov  sang  a  snatch  of  melody  in 
an  unguarded  moment  the  gaoler  struck  him  a 
blow  in  the  face  with  his  fist.  The  gaol  in 
which  these  occurrences  took  place  is  known  as 
the  Novobelgorod  Central  Prison,  situated  in 
the  Volchansk  district,  about  fifty-nine  versts 
distant  from  the  town  of  Kharkov.  A  descrip- 
tion of  the  place  appeared  in  the  "  Moscow  Tel-  Y 
egraph"  of  the  6th  (18th)  of  December,  1882. '^ 

1  It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  this  allegation  is  denied  in  Russian 
official  circles.     The  evidence  upon  which  it  was  based  is  that  of 
an  eye-witness,  who  declared  that  at  the  place  of  execution  Ryssa-      "jf 
kov  showed  his  *'  mutilated  hands  "  and  said,  "  They  have  tortured     / 
us"  (muy pytali).     That  these  words  were  distinctly  heard  is  very 
doubtful,  since  the  authorities  kept  a  band  of  music  playing  up  to  I 
the  last  moment. 


MODERN  IRRITATIONS.  247 

The  writer  spoke  of  the  prison  as  "so  over- 
crowded that  the  convicts  lie  one  atop  of  an- 
other. The  air  in  the  cells  is  so  impure  that 
any  one  not  accustomed  to  the  place  cannot  re- 
main inside  for  more  than  a  few  minutes. 
The  boards  which  form  the  beds  are  frightfully- 
unclean.  .  .  .  The  prisoners  themselves  look  ill 
and  exhausted.  They  live  in  a  state  of  the 
greatest  nervous  excitement.  For  punishment 
they  are  put  for  from  one  to  seven  days  into 
small  dark  holes,  in  which  a  man  can  lie  down 
only  with  the  greatest  difficulty." 

The  cells  of  the  citadel  (ravelin)  prison  in 
St.  Petersburg  are  described  as  dark  and  cold 
as  the  grave.  The  walls  drip  with  damp,  and 
there  are  pools  of  water  on  the  floor.  The  food 
given  to  the  prisoners  here  consists  of  vegetable 
soup  and  bread.  The  place  is  warmed  in  winter 
once  every  three  days  ;  every  other  day  the  pris- 
oners are  allowed  to  take  exercise,  that  is,  for  a 
quarter  of  an  hour  each  time.  No  reading  or 
relaxation  of  any  kind  is  permitted.  The  pris- 
oners are  closely  watched.  If  one  makes  a 
movement  with  the  head  or  hand,  or  only  looks 
at  something,  the  guard  immediately  jumps 
from  his  seat  and  asks  the  reason  of  the  action. 
It  was  in  this  prison  that  Zubkovsky  tried  to 
make  geometrical  figures  with  his  bread  in  order 
to  practice  geometry  for  relaxation,  and  had  it 


248  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

taken  away  from  him  with  the  remark  that  hard 
labor  convicts  were  not  permitted  to  amuse 
themselves.  Blows  and  the  black  hole  are 
amongst  the  punishments  awarded.  It  was  here 
that  Shiryaev  fell  into  consumption ;  here  that 
Okladslgy  .and  TsukernoajQ,  went  mad ;  here  that 
Martynovsky  tried  to  commit  suicide. 

In  the  Kharkov  prison  political  convicts  are 
kept  from  three  to  five  years  in  solitary  confine-* 
ment  and  in  irons,  in  dark,  damp  cells  that 
measure  only  ten  feet  by  six,  altogether  isolated 
from  intercourse  with  human  beings.  No  books 
are  allowed  and  no  implements  for  manual  la- 
bor. Shut  up  in  places  like  these,  Prince  Kra- 
gotkin  writes,  prisoners  "  go  rapidly  to  decay, 
and  either  descend  calmly  to  the  grave,  or  be- 
come lunatics.     They  do  not  go  mad  as,  after 

being  outraged  by  gendarmes,  Miss  M ,  the 

promising  young  painter,  did.  She  was  bereft 
of  reason  instantly  ;  her  madness  was  simulta- 
neous with  her  shame.  Upon  them  insanity 
steals  gradually  and  slowly ;  the  mind  rots  in 
the  body  from  hour  to  hour."  In  1878  the 
prisoners  at  Kharkov,  life  having  become  in- 
supportable, rebelled ;  six  determined  to  starve 
themselves  to  death.  For  a  week  they  refused 
to  eat,  and  after  terrible  scenes  arising  from  the 
attempt  to  feed  them  by  injection,  they  were 
induced  by  delusive  promises  to  take  nourish- 


MODERN  IRRITATIONS.  249 

ment.  Their  demands  were  for  regular  warm- 
ing of  the  cells,  the  provision  of  beds,  exercise 
by  twos  instead  of  singly,  placing  of  the  lamp 
in  the  cell  rather  than  in  the  corridor,  and  more 
humane  treatment  by  the  guard  and  officials  in 
charge. 

The  lot  of  the  political  exile  in  Siberia  is  still 
more  painful.  "  We  live,"  writes  a  prisoner 
from  Yakutsk,  "  literally  in  darkness,  only  hav- 
ing light  for  an  hour  and  a  half  or  two  hours  in 
order  that  we  may  see  to  eat.  Our  food  is  fish; 
we  have  no  bread  and  cannot  get  meat.  I  thank 
you  for  the  papers  sent,  but  I  have  no  money 
to  buy  candles,  and  therefore  have  n't  the  light 
to  read  by."  Another  writes,  "  My  scorbutic 
ailment  gets  worse,  and  I  only  long  now  for 
death."  "  We  work,"  says  a  third,  "  from  six 
o'clock  in  the  morning  until  eight  o'clock  at 
night  in  cold  water  that  often  reaches  up  to 
our  knees.  We  leave  work  quite  exhausted, 
and  go  to  bed  at  once,  for  to  read  or  converse  is 
impossible.  Last  year  (1881)  we  buried  four  of 
our  comrades.  Semv^anovsky  and  Rodin  com- 
mitted suicide.  Neizvestny  and  Krivozhyein 
died  this  year  (1882).  Kovalevskaya 1  went 
mad.  The  same  fate  awaits  many  more  of  us. 
We  live  in  two  narrow  cells.  We  get  no  med- 
ical help.     We  need  books,  clothes,  shoes,  and 

1  Evidently  a  woman. 


250  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

money.  Our  torments  are  frightful  ....  Fare- 
well, dear  friends,  this  is  my  last  letter."  The 
prison  referred  to  in  this  communication  is 
known  as  the  Nizhnaya  Kara  (Lower  Kara). 
The  political  convicts  confined  therein  num- 
bered, at  the  beginning  ofJUi&£,  about  ninety. 
One  of  them  describes  the  prison  as  dirty  and 
damp.  "  There  is  a  physician,  but  he  treats 
the  sick  so  badly  that  they  prefer  not  to  ask  his 
services.  It  was  he  who  had  half-insane^  Kpxa- 
ievskaya  whipped  nearly  to  death.  .  .  .  Arm- 
feld  was  also  beaten  with  a  stick  for  simple  im- 
politeness. Zhutin  died  in  his  chains,  bound  to 
the  wall.  Kolenkin  is  on  the  point  of  death, 
owing  to  the  wounds  caused  by  his  chains."  2 

Let  me  close  this  chapter  with  a  word  on  the 
passport  system,  which  must  be  described  as  one 
of  the  most  harassing  and  widespread  sources 
of  all  political  irritation  in  modern  Russia.     It 

2  A  few  of  the  statements  here  given  are  reproduced  from  the 
revolutionary  organs,  Na  Rodinye  (At  Home),  Narodnaya  Volya 
(Will  of  the  People)  and  the  Chorny  Peredyel  (Black  Partition). 
The  source  is  certainly  partisan,  yet  it  is  the  only  source  available, 
and  so  long  as  the  Russian  government  restricts  to  adversaries  the 
opportunity  of  collecting  and  disseminating  information  on  this 
subject,  so  long  will  that  information  command  the  confidence  and 
faith  of  the  public.  It  is  at  any  rate  as  much  entitled  to  credence 
as  the  statements  of  some  of  those  travelers  who  have  enjoyed  the 
honor  of  being  "personally  conducted  "  through  the  prison  estab- 
lishments of  his  highness  the  Tsar,  but  who  have  set  out  on  their 
mission  of  exploration  without  the  single  indispensable  requisite 
for  that  misssion,  namely,  a  colloquial  knowledge  of  Russian. 


MODERN  IRRITATIONS.  ,    251 

puts  the  population  practically  in  the  position 
of  convicts  discharged  on  ticket-of-leave,  and 
compelled  to  report  from  time  to  time  to  the 
police.  If,  on  the  one  hand,  it  is  a  source  of 
revenue,  yielding  three  million  of  rubles  a  year 
or  thereabouts,  on  the  other  it  is  a  serious  obsta- 
cle to  freedom  of  motion  and  commercial  develop- 
ment. Nothing  can  terrify  a  peasant  more  than 
the  prospect  of  losing,  or  being  refused  his 
"  papers."  People  have  been  known  to  commit 
suicide  rather  than  be  found  without  a  passport. 
Not  a  few  have  been  driven  by  their  inability 
to  procure  police  certificates  into  secret  socie- 
eties,  the  members  of  which,  for  the  most  part, 
live  "  illegally,"  that  is  to  say,  without  pass- 
ports, or  on  the  strength  of  documents  fabri- 
cated by  themselves.  The  police  frequently 
refuse  passports  to  persons  whom  they  suspect 
of  "  political  infidelity ;"  this  kind  of  terrorisi 
is  a  favorite  form  of  ex-judicial  persecution  in 
Russia. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  REVOLT:  THE 
FUTURE. 


The  conclusion  that,  under  the  existing 
regime  in  Russia,  the  revolt  is  a  permanent  ele- 
ment of  the  national  life  thus  becomes  inevitable. 
It  is  an  essence,  a  nature  of  things,  rather  than  a 
mere  phenomenon.  Its  inner  reality  exists  inde- 
pendently of  its  outer  accident  or  form.  Just  as 
a  mass  of  water  may  assume  the  character  of  a 
still  lake,  a  rippling  brook,  a  noisy  waterfall, 
may  ascend  even  in  vapor  and  appear  as  a 
cloud,  yet  retain  unchanging  the  nature  and 
properties  of  its  essence,  so  the  Russian  revolt 
takes  all  protean  shapes  in  the  process  of  its 
expression.  |  Constrained  by  circumstance  to 
manifest  itself  as  passive  discontent,  as  religious 
protest,  as  philosophical  dogma,  as  ethnological 
sentiment,  as  negation  in  criticism, as  nihilism  in 
morals,  as  socialism,  as  incitement  to  revolution, 
or  as  violence  and  terrorism,  the  revolt  never  va- 
ries in  its  inner  being,  never  changes  in  its  es- 
sence, but  remains  the  immutable  antithesis  of 
absolutism ;  in  this  aspect  not  tainted  with  the 


EUROPE  AND   THE  REVOLT.  253 

immorality  of  force,  or  soiled  with  the  shedding 
of  blood,  but  fair  as  the  cause  of  human  liberty, 
and  irradiated  with  the  sunlight  of  awakened 
human  consciousness  in  its  struggle  with  the 
darker  hemisphere  of  the  national  life. 

What  is  true  of  the  various  parties  who  cham- 
pion the  revolt  is  true  also  of  the  demands  they 
make.  Their  programmes  have  an  illustrative 
but  no  absolute  value.  Any  reforms  that  re- 
move the  grievances  out  of  which  the  revolt 
has  arisen  will  at  once  make  the  revolt  impossi- 
ble. At  the  head  of  these  grievances  stands 
absolute  power.  We  have  already  seen  to  what 
a  degree  this  principle  is  opposed  to  the  racial 
sentiment,  and  contrary  to  the  national  tradi- 
tions. The  popular  institutions  protest  against 
it.  Organizations  like  the  mir  and  the  artel  — 
the  one  representing  the  agricultural  and  the 
other  the  urban  industries  of  the  country  — 
alone  show  how  tenaciously  the  people  cling  to 
the  old  Slav  principle  of  equality  in  organization, 
and  free  choice  of  the  instruments  of  rule.  It 
is  thus  not  the  educated  classes  alone,  but  the 
masses,  —  peasant  and  arjpan,  land-owner  and 
student,  —  of  whose  aspirations,  at  least,  it  may 
be  said,  as  it  was  said  of  the  earliest  and  freest 
Russians,  "  Neminem  f erant  imperantem."  True 
enough  it  is  that  amongst  the  peasants  the  re- 
volt must  long  remain  in  its  passive  stage.    The 


254  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT, 

glamour  which  popular  superstitions  throw 
around  the  personal  elements  of  Tsarism  is  not 
yet  fully  dissipated  by  the  brighter  illumination 
of  knowledge.  Yet  year  by  year,  partly  owing 
to  educational  processes,  partly  owing  to  propa- 
ganda, even  the  peasants  are  being  won  over  to 
the  growing  battalions  of  discontent. 

How,  then,  is  the  struggle  likely  to  end? 
Will  concession  bring  it  to  a  premature  close, 
or  will  the  revolt  swell  finally  into  revolution  ? 
Here  it  becomes  necessary  to  carry  the  conflict 
somewhat  beyond  the  limits  within  which  it 
has  hitherto  been  confined.  The  struggle  is  no 
mere  effort  to  gain  old  rights  of  self-govern- 
ment on  the  one  hand,  or  to  resist  encroach- 
ments upon  power  on  the  other.  Stated  in  its 
broadest  aspect  the  issue  is  not  only  one  of 
Tsarism  against  constitutional  liberty,  but  of  a 
federative  union  of  Russian  Slavs^)against  cen- 
tralized government.  The  unified  empire  was 
as  repugnant  to  the  Russians  as  absolutism 
itself.  Left  to  their  own  free  choice  they  in- 
variably tended  to  the  principle  of  federalism. 
Long  before  the  coming  of  the  Varegs,  the 
union  between  the  Russian  volosts  was  of  a 
purely  federal  character.  The  federal  instincts 
of  the  people  were  also  shown  in  the  division 
of  the  country  into  appanages.  Federalization 
was,  in  fact,   the   inevitable   corollary  of   the 


EUROPE  AND   THE  REVOLT.  255 

Russian  repugnance  to  sovereignty;  to  retain 
power  in  their  own  hands  the  people  found  it 
necessary  to  keep  the  land  divided  into  a  num- 
ber of  small  principalities.  And  that  this  was 
no  accidental  arrangement,  but  a  deliberate  pol- 
icy, is  shown  by  the  determination  with  which 
they  resisted  every  attempt  to  unify  the  divided 
territories.  It  was  only  when  all  opposition 
had  been  broken  by  force  of  arms  that  we  at 
last  see  Russia  centralized,  and  absolute  power 
building  itself  a  home  over  the  ruins  of  that 
federalism  which  had  so  effectively  sheltered 
the  liberties  of  the  people. 

This  predilection  for  federal  institutions  has 
tinged  the  revolt  from  its  inception.  Slavo- 
phils, Panslavists,  and  Nihilistic  parties  have 
all  had  schemes  in  view  for  securing  a  federa- 
tive union  of  the  races  composing  the  Russian 
empire.  In  this  way  the  revolt  may  be  said  to 
aim  not  only  at  securing  constitutional  freedom 
for  36,000,000  Great  Russians,  but  at  provid- 
ing political  reforms  for  the  Poles,  the  Little 
Russians,  the  White  Russians,  Finns,  Lithua- 
nians, etc.  The  Russian  revolutionary  move- 
ment of  1860  drew  not  a  little  of  its  virulence 
from  a  federalistic  understanding  with  Polish 
conspirators  of  the  time.  Both  Herzen  and 
Bakunin  prepared  schemes  of  national  federa- 
tion.    Kostomarov,  the  historian,  Shevchenko, 


/ 


256  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

the  famous  poet,  and  Kulish,  the  ethnographer, 
jointly  founded  the  Cyrillo-Methodius  Union, 
the  aim  of  which  was  the  national  re-birth  of 
Little  Russia,  and  a  federation  of  all  the  Rus- 
sian Slavs.  Overtures  have  from  time  to  time 
been  made  to  the  Cossacks,  the  Jews,  the  Esths, 
the  Letts,  and  even  to  the  Germans  of  the  Bal- 
tic provinces,1  on  the  basis  of  a  federative  alli- 
ance against  absolutism.  The  very  organiza- 
tion of  the  revolt  itself  has  been  throughout 
mainly  of  a  federalistic  character.  The  con- 
spirators have  never  jointly  chosen  a  dictator 
to  direct  their  movements,  nor  have  they  toler- 
ated absolutism  in  any  form.  Decentralization 
has  been  the  strength  of  terrorism ;  sporadic 
activity  the  main  source  of  its  success.  To 
name  a  leader  of  the  revolt  would  be  difficult, 
simply  because  the  revolt  never  had  any  leader. 
But  in  another  sense  all  who  champion  it  are 
leaders,  hence  its  formidableness. 

The  issue  of  the  revolt  is  thus  not  only  an 
issue  of  federalism  against  centralized  govern- 
ment :  upon  the  result  of  the  struggle  depends 
the  jfuture  of  Russian  imperialism  itself.  The 
first  act  of  a  popular  government  would  be  to 
replace  the  existing  cohesion  of  force  by  a  free 
grouping  of  at  least  the  Slav  elements  of  the 

1  See  Der  Baltische  Federalist,  published  at  Geneva,  also  the 
address  An  meine  baltische  Landsleute. 


EUROPE  AND   THE  REVOLT.  257 

population  in  voluntary  federation.  It  needs 
no  gift  of  prophecy  to  predict  what  would  fol- 
low. The  result  would  be  a  change  of  immense 
international  significance.  The  Russian  state 
would  speedily  lose  its  character  as  an  aggres- 
sive power..  The  champions  of  the  revolt  love 
their  country  and  their  race,  but  for  the  empire 
they  have  little  historical  or  political  affection. 
The  country  is  linked  with  hallowed  and  sacred 
memories ;  the  empire  is  associated  with  an  end- 
less succession  of  degradations  and  sufferings. 
In  their  country  the  Russians  lived  as  freemen 
and  happy  ;  when  the  empire  came,  it  brought 
absolutism,  destroyed  the  communal  liberties, 
debased  the  individual,  made  millions  of  slaves. 
No  reader  of  Russian  history  need  be  reminded 
that  the  growth  of  Russia  the  empire  did  not 
really  begin  until  Russia  the  country  had  been 
forced  into  receiving  a  ruler  of  the  Byzantine 
type  to  replace  the  prince  elected  in  popular 
assembly  as  servant  and  not  master  of  the 
people.  The  moment  autocratic  power  was 
established  in  Russia,  that  moment  the  Rus- 
sian empire  began  its  movement  of  expan- 
sSJon.  From  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  a  period  which  represents 
the  first  hundred  years  of  absolutism  and  cen- 
tralization in  Russia,  the  territory  of  the  em- 
pire was  quadrupled.     Since  the  beginning  of 

17 


258  .  THE  RUSSIAN  BE  VOLT. 

the  seventeenth  century  it  has  increased  from 
three  millions  to  eight  millions  of  square  miles, 
in  round  numbers.  Starting  from  the  nuclei 
of  her  national  life  at  Kiev,  Novgorod,  and  Mos- 
cow, Russia  has  extended  her  borders  north- 
ward and  eastward  and  southward  until  she 
presents  to  the  startled  geographer  and  politi- 
cian a  continuous  territory  equal  in  surface  to 
that  which  the  moon  turns  to  the  earth.1  And 
the  expansion  has  been  wrought  not  by  the 
Russian  people  themselves,  but  at  the  expense 
of  the  popular  liberties  ;  not  owing  to  the  sym- 
pathetic acquiescence  of  international  specta- 
tors, but  by  sacrifice  of  the  interests,  and  by 
overriding  of  the  resistance,  of  protesting  na- 
tionalities. 

Viewed  in  the  light  of  these  facts,  the  issue 
of  the  revolt  is  no  longer  of  a  partisan  or  even 
of  a  merely  national  character ;  it  becomes  of 
immense  significance  for  Europe.  It  is  no  less 
than  this :  shall  this  vast  empire,  drawing  from 
tyranny  at  home  its  means  of  aggression  abroad, 
go  on  in  its  present  path  of  expansion  for  a  pe- 
riod and  with  results  to  which  limits  cannot 
even  be  suggested  ?  Or  shall  the  Russian  peo- 
ple, breaking  up  into  peaceful  federations,  and 
drawing  from  recovered  popular  rights  the 
means  of  a  prosperous  internal  development,  de- 

i  Humboldt. 


EUROPE  AND  THE  REVOLT.  259 

vote  themselves  thenceforward  to  a  policy  of  con- 
cession at  home  and  non-interference  abroad? 
The  revolt,  it  should  be  remembered,  not  only 
opposes  internal  tyranny :  it  is  the  foe  of  im- 
perial aggrandizement.  A  stationary  Russia 
under  absolutism  is  an  impossibility.  Retrogres- 
sion means  ruin  to  imperial  interests.  The  nat- 
ural and  normal  policy  of  the  empire  is  thus 
one  which  makes  Russia  a  constant  menace  to 
Europe.  That  this  menace  should  arise  from 
an  immoral  usurpation  of  popular  rights  and 
liberties  shows  the  close  moral  solidarity  of 
nations,  the  intimate  dependence  of  universal 
well-being  upon  universal  justice,  the  impossi- 
bility of  confining  the  results  of  wrong-doing, 
and  particularly  wrong-doing  in  the  form  of 
offenses  against  the  freedom  of  a  people,  to  the 
country  which  suffers  from  them  the  first.  The 
nations  all  have  an  interest  in  the  removal  of 
the  popular  wrong  in  Russia,  since  out  of  that 
wrong  springs  not  only  the  terrorism  of  the  re- 
volt, threatening  an  imperial  integrity  which  is 
not  needed,  but  the  terrorism  of  the  empire, 
menacing  an  international  integrity  which  must  . 
be  maintained.  The  cause  of  democracy  in 
Russia  is  the  cause  of  Europe.  In  a  commu-  j 
nity  of  constitutional  governments  absolutism 
is  the  common  enemy. 

The  proofs  of   all  this  are   cumulative.     If 


260  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

Russia  is  the  vastest,  she  is  also  the  youngest 
state  in  Europe.  A  like  rapidity  of  develop- 
ment is  unknown  in  history.  The  national 
literature  is  scarcely  more  than  a  century  old. 
The  first  Russian  poet  came  four  hundred  years 
after  the  English  had  Chaucer.  Juvenile  as  a 
nation,  Russia  is  youthful  as  a  race.  She  stands, 
as  Bishop  Strossmeyer  expressed  it,  "  on  the 
threshold  of  the  morning. "  Her  day  is  in  the 
future,  and  she  grows  towards  it  continually. 
Such  is  the  rate  at  which  her  people  increase 
that  in  half  a  century  the  Russian  empire  will 
number  a  population  of  close  upon  lSS^OC^OOO.1 
How  these  158,000,000  of  people  shall  be  wielded 
is,  therefore,  of  immense  importance  to  Europe. 
If  they  are  wielded  from  within,  with  the  good 
sense  and  prudence  that  naturally  characterize 
popular  self-government,  then  the  nations  may 
look  on  with  sympathy  and  approval.  But  if 
they  are  to  be  wielded  by  despotism,  some  new 
means  of  protecting  Europe  from  Russian  en- 
croachments will  have  to  be  devised.  The  ex- 
pansion of  the  empire  means  the  spread  of 
absolutism ;  and  in  this  sense,  as  illustrating  an 
inevitable  tendency  that  must  be  promoted  by 
not  being  held  in  check,  it  may  be  said,  with 

1  In  the  absence  of  wars  or  exceptional  maladies.  The  yearly 
increase  of  population  is,  in  Russia,  781,000;  in  Germany,  564,094; 
in  Great  Britain,  276,623;  France,  96,647.  (Russian  Official  Board 
of  Statistics.) 


EUROPE  AND  THE  REVOLT.  261 

truth,  that  if  the  will  of  Peter  did  not  exist, 
Europe  would  be  under  the  necessity  of  invent- 
ing it. 

The  revolt  in  its  widest  phase  1  have  defined 
as  a  tacit  alliance  of  interest  between  the  Rus- 
sian people  and  the  nations  of  Europe  against 
a  principle  and  method  of  government  hostile 
to  the  common  weal.  It  is  the  protest  of  eighty 
millions  of  people  against  their  continued  em- 
ployment as  a  barrier  in  the  path  of  peaceful 
human  progress  and  national  development.  It 
is  the  protest  of  Europe  against  the  utilization 
of  enormous  forces  of  racial  growth  and  repro- 
duction for  the  organized  furtherance  of  per- 
sonal ambitions  and  dynastic  wealth.  Yet  the 
narrower  and  more  immediate  issue  is  that  of  a 
struggle  which  is  purely  domestic.  The  early 
dissolution  of  absolutism  by  force  is  a  contin- 
gency the  least  probable  of  all.  The  devoted 
and  ignorant  loyalty  of  the  peasant  will  remain 
the  safeguard  of  the  empire  against  revolution 
for  many  decades  yet  to  come.  Terrorism  may- 
abolish  the  individual,  but  it  leaves  the  princi- 
ple intact.  The  most  dangerous  form  of  con^ 
spiracy  known  in  Russian  history,  that  is  to 
say,  military  conspiracy,  has  only  succeeded  in 
compassing  dynastic  changes.  Yet  autocracy  in 
Russia  is  none  the  less  doomed.  The  forces 
that  undermine  it  are  cumulative  and  relent- 


V 


262  THE  RUSSIAN  REVOLT. 

less.  Not  terrorism,  or  nihilism,  or  socialism, 
is  it  that  feeds  those  forces,  but  civilization, 
national  enlightenment,  individual  awakening, 
flence  the  true  policy  of  autocracy  is  to  spread 
its  dissolution  —  after  the  manner  of  certain 
financial  operations  —  over  a  number  of  years. 
It  will  thus  be  possible,  on  the  one  hand,  to 
avoid  a  rude  shock  to  imperial  amour  propre, 
and  on  the  other  to  afford  the  due  preparation 
for  a  comprehensive  scheme  of  constitutional 
government.  But  the  demand  for  an  immedi- 
ate and  substantial  concession  is  none  the  less 
urgent.  It  might  take  the  form  of  a  tem- 
porary convention  of  popular  representatives, 
chosen  in  the  various  governments,  or  of  an  ad- 
mission of  delegates  of  the  people  to  co-deliber- 
ation with  the  members  of  the  Imperial  Coun- 
cil (Gosudarstvenny  Sovyet),  after  a  scheme 
said  to  have  been  devised  by  the  late  Tsar. 
The  method  of  the  change  is  really  not  of  im- 
portance. The  vital  matter  is  that  the  reform 
shall  at  once  concede  and  practically  apply  the 
principle  of  popular  self-government,  granting 
at  the  same  time  the  fullest  rights  of  free  speech 
and  public  assembly.  To  further  procrastinate 
is  simply  to  purchase  a  merely  temporary  im- 
munity from  the  inevitable,  at  immense  per- 
sonal and  political  risk. 

Let  the  Tsar  and  his  advisers  beware.     The 


EUROPE  AND  THE  REVOLT.  263 

spectacle  of  this  frightfully  unequal  struggle  — 
unequal  alike  in  its  justifications  and  In  the 
physical  forces  which  it  arrays  against  each 
other  —  is  not  lost  upon  Europe,  or  even  upon 
America.  A  system  that  maintains  itself  by 
the  infliction  of  human  suffering  and  the  nega- 
tion of  human  rights  cannot  long  expect  to  re- 
ceive from  governments  the  tolerance  which  is 
denied  to  it  by  peoples.  Already  nations  are  be- 
ginning to  recognize  that  the  standing  menace 
in  the  east  of  Europe  is  not  the  Russian  race, 
but  Russian  absolutism ;  already  a  greater  dan- 
ger is  growing  up  to  the  "  Emperor  of  all  the 
Russias  "  than  the  danger  of  constitutional  re- 
form. And  yet  it  would  be  sad  if  the  issues 
were  always  to  be  confined  within  political  lim- 
its. Hence  it  is  well  that  one  can  look  for- 
ward to  the  time  when  a  new  conception  of  in- 
ternational rights  and  obligations  shall  take 
the  place  of  the  old ;  when  serried  lines  of  glis- 
tening bayonets  and  smoking  cannon  will  no 
longer  be  needed  to  relieve  the  struggle  for  lib- 
erty from  the  reproach  of  crime ;  when  tyranny 
shall  be  an  offense  against  the  community  of 
nations,  as  it  is  now  an  offense  against  the 
community  of  individuals,  and  when  countries 
that  have  won  their  own  liberty  and  gone 
through  the  bitter  day  shall  gladly  repay  their 
glorious  gains  in  noble  blows  struck  for  univer- 
sal freedom. 


INDEX. 


Absorption,  11. 

Acclimatization,  11. 

Administrative  procedure,  242,  243. 

Agriculturists,  Wandering  of,  20 ;  at- 
tached to  glebe,  21. 

Aksakov,  175, 176. 

Alexander  I.,  156,  163,  164,  165. 

Alexander  II.,  155. 

Alexander  III.,  210. 

"Annals  of  the  Fatherland,"  the, 
234. 

Apolism,  results  of,  51. 

Art,  67,  68. 

Assassination:  attempt  at,  by  Kara- 
kasov,  19$ ;  stabbing  of  Mesent- 
sev,  206  ;  Soloviev's  attempt,  207 ; 
Alexander.  II.  killed,  209  ;  Sudei- 
kin  assassinated,  210. 

Astrakhan,  commerce  of,  40. 

Atavism,  in  eating,  31 ;  in  religion, 
140. 

Authority,  protest  and  revolt 
against,  131,  139,  140,  160,  161. 

Autocracy,  99  ;  doomed,  261 ;  true 
policy  of,  262. 

Avakum,  137,  138. 

Baku,  39. 

Bakuniu,  176,  200. 

Banishment,  without  trial,  242. 

Beds,  49. 

Berdichev,  38. 

Bestyuzhev,  167,  171. 

Bielinsky,  156,  195,  209. 

Black  Sea,  39. 

Blanc,  Louis,  156. 

Breakfast,  30. 

Biichner,  156. 

Buckle,  156. 

Byron,  156. 

Byzantinism,  93,  95,  96, 98,  177, 186. 

Byzantium,  55. 

Catherine,  160-162. 

Catholic  Church,  civilization  of,  108. 

Caucasus,  7. 


Censure,  162,  233-235. 

Central  Asia,  15,  16. 

Centralization,  opposed  by  the  re- 
volt, 254. 

Chaikovtsy  Society,  221,  222,  226. 

Cheremiss,  10.      ^*»  ^^    _/_X^ 

Chernishevsky,  185,  Wff,   \$B>\   107 ; 
life  of,  sketched,  2lf 
218';    influence, 
with,2>C 

Children,  beating  of,  102. 

Chin,  evils  of,  235,  236. 

Christianity,  defects  of  Byzantine, 
107,  108. 

Chuds,  136. 

Cities,  lack  of,  35 ;  at  first  of  wood, 
36  ;  etymology  of,  36 ;  eleven  larg- 
est, 38;  contrasted  with  cities  of 
Western  Europe,  54  ;  mere  taxable 
units,  55  ;  deprived  of  burgher 
element,  56. 

Citizenship,  inactivity  of,  236. 

Civilization,  8;  influenced  by  Mongol 
invasion,  12 ;  lateness  of,  64 ;  early 
Russian,  176. 

Class,  distinctions  of,  104. 

Climate,  political  effects  of,  64,  65. 

Colonization,  effects  of,  127-129  ;  in 
Russia,  129. 

Commune,  character  of,  87  ;  age  of, 
90. 

Conspiracy,  beginnings  of,  166  ;  the 
Petrashevsky,  195  ;  of  Nechayev, 
199 ;  at  Chigirin,  204. 

Constantinople,  21. 

Contemporary,  the,  195,  197,  214, 
217. 

Cossacks,  recruited  by  fugitive  serfs, 
21 ;  republic  of,  destroyed,  161. 

Counting  frame,  17. 

Counting,  lack  of  proficiency  in,  17. 

Country,  vastness  of,  23. 

Cruelty,  of  legislation,  102. 

Cunning,  origin  of,  105. 

Darwin,  156. 


266 


INDEX. 


V^S 


Dazh-bog,  the  sun-god,  83. 
Democracy,  Russian,  259. 
Derzhavin,  155. 
Despotism,  of  father,  102  ;  of  law, 

102,  103 ;  paralyzed  by  Peter,  153. 
Dissent,  motive  force  of,  142. 
Dissenters,  134,  152. . 
Dobrolyubov,  yfi,  2£1. 
Domicile,  easy  change  of,  33. 
Domiciliary  period,  beginning  of,  42, 

43. 
DomostroV,  the,  31,  32,  95,  96,  102, 

118,  120,  147,  157,  159. 
Dostoyevsky,  184,  187. 
Dram  shop,  influence  of,  239. 
Drenteln,  207. 
Durachok,  Ivanushka,  105. 


Education,  regulation  of,  163,  164. 

> Emancipation,  results  of,  240. 
Empire,  significance  of ;  national  in- 
stincts hostile  to,  257  ;  a  creation 

of  autocracy,  257  ;  growth  of,  258. 
Encyclopaedists,  165. 
Enlightenment,   influences  of,  146,    fierbersteinytit^d',  15, 16,  29, 106. 

147,  etc.  ;    enemy  of   autocracy,*j/Herzen,  176, 177, 18f. 

153 ;  welcome  of,  154. 
Enslavement,  of  the  servant,  101 

of  the  peasant,  101  ;  of  the  wife 

110. 
Epic  songs,  83 ;  story  of  Ilya,  84, 85 
Escapades,  211. 
Europe:  its  relation  to  the  revolt 

253,   254,   etc.;   revolt  and,   261; 

how  menaced,  258. 
Executive  Committee,  208,  209,  237. 
Exile,  7  ;  number  sent  into,  210 ;  lot 

of  in  Siberia,  249,  250. 
Explosions :  at  Winter  Palace,  208 ; 

at  Moscow,  208. 


Fairs,  22. 

Family,  becomes  an  autocracy,  102 ; 

Europeanized,  107^ 
Federation,  255-257. 
Festivals,  189. 
Finns,  10. 
Fish,  30. 

Food,  eaten  in  memory  of  dead,  13. 
Foreigners,  38. 

Foreign  tastes,  how  formed,  74. 
Forests,  6 ;  as  factors  of  polytheism, 

62,  63. 
Fourier,  156,  194. 
Freemasonry,  166. 
Funerals,  13. 

Germans,  38. 
Godunov,  Boris,  21. 
Goethe,  156,  181. 


Gogol,  37,  48, 155,  156,  173, 184, 187, 
227,  236. 

Government,  character  of  early 
Slav,  91. 

Great  Russian  language,  25;  com- 
pared with  Turkish  tongues,  26 ; 
with  European  speech,  27  ;  char- 
acteristics, 28. 

Great  Russians,  8,  9, 17. 

Greek  Church,  protest  against,  130 ; 
book  controversy,  131,  134  ;  colla- 
tion of  texts,  132,  133;  triumph 
of  the  reformers,  133 ;  outbreak 
against,  135 ;  union  of,  with  state, 
238,  239 ;  re -birth  of,  needed7240. 

Griboyedov,  7, 155, 156. 

Grinevsky,  life  of,  229. 

Gurko,  207. 


Habits,  transmission  of,  10, 11 ;  Asi- 
atic, 13  ;  eating,  29  ;  drinking,  30. 
Haxthausen,  159. 
Hegel,  156,  173. 
Helfmann,  Hesse,  210. 


History,  5.      f       / 

Hospitality,  81-83. 

House,  lack  of  pride  in,  50  ;  doors 
of,  ignored  by  servants,  50  ;  dom- 
icile of  peasant,  51. 


;\ 


mprisoned,  number  of,  210. 

Individual,  freedom  of,  86  ;  ignored 
by  the  Greek  Church,  97 ;  de- 
basement of,  104. 

Individualism,  reaction  by,  194. 

Individuality,  quickening  of,  130 ;  a 
motive  force,  142. 

Insurrection,  along  the  Volga,  136 ; 
of  Pugachev,  139,  160 ;  of  Decem- 
ber, 167 ;  Polish,  197. 

Intermingling,  10,  12. 

Jews,  38. 

Judges,  behavior  of,  243,  244. 

Judicial  reform,  241. 

Kalmucks,  32. 
Kantimir,  155. 
Kapustin,  182. 

Karamzin,  cited,  42, 86,  88,  102, 155. 
Kazan,  39,  40. 
Kibalshchich,  life  of,  228. 
Kiev,  a  place  of  pilgrimage,  22 ;  pop- 
ulation, 38. 
Killed,  number  of,  210,  211. 
Kinglake,  17. 
Kishinev,  38. 
I  Koltsov,  155. 


INDEX. 


267 


Kostomarov,  118. 
Krim,  1*1;  war  in,  195. 
Krylov,  156. 
Kvass,  14,  120. 

Landscape,  5,  6;  no  real  pictur- 
esqueness  in,  69. 

Language,  evidence  of,  24 ;  lacks  di- 
alects, 25. 

Legislature,  89 ;  humanitarian  char- 
acter of,  91 ;  change  to  cruelty, 
102. 

Lermontov,  7,  187. 

Liberties,  eclipse  of,  101. 

linguists,  Russians  as,  17-19. 

Literati,  166. 

Literature,  7,  155,  156. 

Little  Russia,  serfage  established  in, 
161. 

Love,  122. 

Lying,  origin  of,  105. 

Malthus,  214. 

Manners  at  table,  31, 32 ;  domestic, 
31 ;  of  early  Russians,  80. 

Marriage,  124, 125. 

Materialism,  158.  U 

Maximus,  132. 

Meals,  29.  ' 

Melikov,  Loris,  242. 

Migrant  habits,  20,  23,  52,  56. 

Migration,  9,  11,  21,  22;  its  effect 
upon  Russian  development  and 
institutions,  33 ;  of  cities,  48. 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  157,  215. 

Moleschott,  156. 

Mongolism,  influence  of,  107. 

Mongols,  12, 20,  99,  100. 

Monomakh,  Vladimir,  19. 

Monotony,  ol  landscape,  6. 

Montesquieu,  156. 

Mordvs,  10. 

Moscow,  Herberstein  at,  15;  popu- 
lation, 38 ;  a  genuine  Russian  city, 
40 ;  proverbs  about,  40,  41 ;  relig- 
ious, literary,  and  industrial  sig- 
nificance, 41 ;  an  artificial  crea- 
tion, 42  ;  view  of,  71 ;  character  of 
dwellers  in,  106 ;  insurrection  in, 
160. 

Mountains,  lack  of,  7. 

Municipal  government,  53. 

Muraviev,  160,  167. 

Murder,  punished  by  penalty  of 
death,  103. 

Mysticism,  179-185;  a  part  of  the 
revolt,  182. 

Nechayev,  199. 
Nekrassov,  74,  187,  188. 


Nestor,  80,  81. 

Nevsky  Prospect,  the,  48,  206,  210, 

236. 
Newspapers,  suppression  of,  233, 234. 
Nicholas,  167-169,  171,  193,195. 
Nihilism,  193,  194. 
Nikolaiev,  39. 
Nikon,  132,  134,  151,  194. 
Nomad  languages,  26. 
Novgorod,  48,  88,  112. 
Novikov,  161,.  176. 

Odessa,  38,  39,  225,  226. 

Old  Believers,  excommunicated,  133; 

at  Solovetsky,  135,  151. 
Owen,  194. 

Panslavisni,  177. 

Paris,  Russian  travelers  at,  165. 

Passport  system,  harassment  of, 
250,  251. 

Patronymics,  29. 

Peasants,  73,  83,  106,  165. 

Pechenegs,  10. 

People,  personification  of,  84:  gov- 
ernment by,  87,  88.     >>    >> 

Perovskaya,  Sophie,  2^jJ0o;  sketch 
ofjijgOfe'tc. ;  letj^rgtto  mother, 
225T;  execution  6^gQ9.  ^ 

Pessimism,  185-1927 

Pestel,  166,  167,  170. 

Peter,  predilection  of,  for  small 
apartments,  49 ;  reforms  of,  148  ; 
significance,  character,  and  work 
of,  149-151. 

Petersburg,  48,  152-154,  175,  190- 
192,229,235,237,238. 

Petroleum  trade,  39. 
v\ Pissarev,  JrfKJT 

Plain,  illusions  of,  5. 

Poland,  influence  of,  145,  146. 

Police,  brutality  of,  244,  246-250. 

Polish  language,  25 ;  habits,  32  ;  cit- 
ies, 37,  38. 

Polyans,  81. 

Polygamy,  111. 

Possoshkov,  Ivan,  82. 

Poverty,  238. 

Priesthood,  debasement  of,  239. 

Princes,  rule  of,  88,  89. 

Prisons :  Peter  and  Paul,  206,  247, 
248;  Novobelgorod,  247;  Khar- 
kov, 248 ;  Kara,  250 ;  food  strikes 
in,  206. 

Profession,  lack  of  pride  in,  51. 

Prosecutions,  number  of,  210,  211. 

Protest,  109. 

Prudhon,  156,  194. 

Pskov,  48,  88. 

Pugachev,  139, 160. 


268 


INDEX. 


Punishment,   of    sorcerer,   103;    of 

debtor,  104 ;  corporal,  103. 
Pushkin,  7,  70,  184,  187. 

Rasin,  Stenka,  136. 

Realism,  52,  158. 

Reform,  urgency  of,  262. 

Religion :  ideas  of  future  life,  60 ; 
sun  worship,  61 ,  62  ;  intercourse 
with  the  dead,  78-80 ;  consola- 
tions of  paganism,  80 ;  Christian- 
ity and  its  influences,  94 ;  Greek 
Church,  94,  95  ;  monasticism,  96  ; 
political  aspects,  97  ;  monotheism, 
98;  raskol,  109,  142,  181,  183, 
239;  heresy,  109;  protest,  126; 
communism  in,  141 ;  weakness, 
239. 

Revolt,  energy  of,  137  ;  progress  of, 
138;  takes  form  of  conspiracy, 
161 ;  recognized  by  authorities, 
169  ;  vitality  of,  172  ;  federative 
character  of,  177,  178  ;  enters  the 
dynamic  period,  193  ;  new  policy, 
199,  200  ;  propaganda,  200 ;  social- 
istic phase,  200 ;  pilgrimage  to  the 
people,  201  ;  terrorism,  204,  205, 
etc.  ;  conditions  favoring  revolt, 
237 ;  how  it  is  intensified,  242 ; 
true  nature  of  the  revolt,  252,  etc. ; 
how  will  it  end,  254 ,  significance 
of,  for  Europe,  261  ;  federalistic 
character  of,  256  ;  hostile  to  em- 
pire, 259. 

Rights,  personal,  86. 

Rousseau,  156. 

Russia,  a  country  apart,  8  ;  country 
of  plains,  9  ;  early  territory,  10  ; 
Tatar  period  of,  12,  13  ;  climactic 
life  of,  57  ;  united,  101 ;  European- 
ized,  148,  152,  153 ;  sadness  of, 
187 ;  music,  191  ;  youth  of,  260  ; 
future  population,  260. 

Russians,  mental  powers  and  char- 
acteristics of,  17,  66-68  ;  lingual 
capacity,  17-19 ;  receptivity,  17  ; 
migrant  character,  33 ;  lack  sen- 
timent of  place,  52 ;  political  hu- 
miliation, 54 ;  individuality,  59 ; 
intellect,  65  ;  sadness,  188-190 ; 
versatility,  188. 

Ryliev,  167,171. 

Ryssakov,  209. 

Saltykov,  Prince,  234. 

Samara,  39. 

Samovar,  manufacture,  39. 

Saratov,  population  of,  39. 

Sassulich,  Vyera,  shoots  Trepov,  205. 

Schelling,  156. 


Schiller,  156. 

Schuyler,  cited,  15, 16. 

Sects,  21, 139-141. 

Serf,  enslavement  of,  101 ;  emanci- 
pation of,  157,  196,  240. 

Servility,  appearance  of,  104,  105. 

Shevchenko,  255. 

Siberia,  20,  210,  218,  242,  249. 

Siesta,  31. 

Simon,  St.,  159,  194. 

Slav  race,  9 ;  colonies,  12 ;  teeth, 
vision,  physical  powers,  16  ;  de- 
velopment, 17  ;  migration,  20 ; 
enterprise,  39  ;  residences,  49 ; 
characteristics,  49  ;  mythology, 
60  ;  altruism,  81 ;  intolerance  of 
rulers,  86  ;  family,  86  ;  golden  age, 
91. 

Slavophilism,  172-176,  194. 

Slavs,  8,  11,  16,  19,  20 ;  of  the  Dan- 
ube, 35  ;  without  houses,  35  ;  liv- 
ing in  Oppida,  36  ;  modern  habi- 
tations of,  49 ;  proposed  federa- 
tion of,  177. 

Slavyans,  81. 

Socialism,  157,  194. 

Societies,  166, 167,  195. 

Society,  characteristics  of  Russian, 
232. 

Solovetsky,  insurrection  at,  135  ;  fall 
of,  136. 

Soloviev,  9, 10. 

Spitting,  a  Slav  habit,  32  ;  its  origin, 
32,  33. 

Spring,  effects  of,  59. 

State,  the  new,  106. 

Steppe,  7.  S 

Stryeltsy,  rising  and  extirpation  of, 
138,  151. 

Students,  18,  23,  156,  164,  207,  238. 

Tatar  influence,  13 ;  names  and 
nouns,  14 ;  customs,  14  ;  domina- 
tion, 108. 

Tatars,  12,  23,  39,  83,  131. 

Tax  -  gatherer,  impositions  of,  105, 
106. 

Tea,  30,  31. 

Terem,  abolition  of,  148. 

Third  Section,  206,  207. 

Tolstoi,  Leo,  184,  185, 199. 

Torture,  sanctioned  by  Russian 
code,  103 ;  of  prisoners,  246. 

Town  life,  37 ;  populations,  43-45. 

Towns,  character  and  growth  of, 
44 ;  their  appearance,  46,  47,  71. 

Travel,  migratory  character  of,  23  ; 
natural  to  natives,  23 ;  encour- 
aged by  railway  freaks,  24. 

Tsar,  13. 


INDEX. 


269 


Taarisra,  popular  superstitions  con- 
cerning, 254. 
Tsaritsyn,  39,  40. 
Tula,  39. 
Turanians,  10. 
Turgeniev,  15,  155,  184. 
Tyranny,  fiscal,  56  j  domestic,  115. 

Urals,  8. 

Urban  life,  insignificance  of,  37,  etc. 

Uvarov,169, 170. 

Vagabond  hunting,  22. 
Varegs,  87,  88,  90. 
V*ch<5,  87,  88, 89,  91,  92,  99, 176. 
Vereshchagin,  17. 
Viatka,  48,  88; 

Village  life,  beggarliness  of,  70. 
Vladimir,  82,  108. 

Volga,   commerce   on,   39;   burlaki 
and  songs,  187  ;  propaganda  along, 


204. 


Voronezh,  congress  at,  208. 

Wandering,  habit  of,  21 ;  its  modern 
forms,  22. 


West,  influence  of,  145. 

Western  ideas,  fear  of,  164. 

Westerns,  174.  — 

Winter,  its  aspects  and  appeal  to 
the  imagination,  58,  59  ;  a  despot- 
ism, 62  ;  enemy  of  Mongolism,  65. 

Womenv-72,  73,  74 ;  punishment  of, 
103  ;  characteristics,  144  ;  devo- 
tion of ,  112;  treatment  and  posi- 
tion, 113,  114,  115,  117;  relation 
to  husband,  115 ;  distrusted  by 
church,  116  ;  chastiseinent  of ,  sanc- 
tioned and  enjoined,  118  ;  seclu- 
sion of,  121,122',  at  Moscow,  123; 
ignorance,  123  ;  proverbs  regard- 
ing, 123, 124  ;  influence  of  in  sects, 
144  ;  emancipation  of,  147  ;  con- 
dition of,  in  1843,  159 ;  eccentrici- 
ties of,  159. 

Zemlya  i  Volya,  207,  209. 
Zheliabov,  209  ;  sketch  of,  225,  etc. ; 

executed,  209. 
Zhukovsky,  155. 


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OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


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